Thailand is not alone in facing massive problems with the graduates produced by its universities. About 50% of the graduates cannot find jobs while the output remains high, with around 2 million graduates every year - a good business for the universities, a bad business for society.
Acquiring a degree does not guarantee a job, as many university graduates later find out.
Universities complain about students unwilling to learn, lacking creativity in finding solutions, superficially preparing for exams, while not understanding anything.
Students are distracted by mobile phones, iPads, iPods and iEverything, internet, Japanese cartoons, SMS and MMS, and many things more, right?
But distracted from what? From boring lecture classes as the main tool for broadcasting knowledge, and from textbooks that exclusively aim to prepare for answering examination questions. That is what we call passive learning.
Passive learning is ubiquitous in public education systems all over the world. Such public education systems were developed in the 19th century and mirror the ideals of industrialism, thus processing students in order to maintain manufacturing standards, as the works of Sir Ken Robinson show. One should not say "quality standards" instead, since the common definition of quality is to meet or exceed, expectations. The product of public education systems anywhere is far below what the economy and society needs.
In developing countries such industrial production systems in education are widely abused as a tool to impose dogma and doctrine, thus discouraging students from doing that what they naturally would do if left alone - acquiring values.
Eventually, the cost for public education permanently rises while governments everywhere are forced to cut subsidies and that at a time when the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation prepares for its "20 Years Education For All" conference in Jomtien next month.
The opposite of passive learning is active learning. Speaking about Generation C - connected, communicating, computerised, and, as a rule, born after 1990, as described by Booz & Company - learning will make more use of ubiquitous technology. Peer-to-peer instruction used in the context of project-based or problem-based learning means the teacher sets up the project or problem and may remain available as a consultant, critic and resource person, and provides formative and summative evaluation.
Once we have rewritten our curricula to ask the right questions instead of merely describing content, why should the teacher then be in the same room? In the United Kingdom exists a so-called Granny Cloud of mainly retired teachers that mentors school children in India via Skype. The responsible researcher, Sugata Mitra, started in 1999 with the "Hole In The Wall" experiment in Dehli aiming to bring education to areas where no teachers are available or want to go (i.e. areas remote in any way - geographically, socially, or economically).
Mr Mitra has shown that four students sharing one computer, supported by a non-knowledgeable motivator, can reach the same level of education in English on their own as students of the best private schools with highly qualified teachers can do - irrespective of who, what or where they are. CNN, BBC and other media reported last year the advent of hybrid models that apply these findings within formal school education in British schools.
Why should the person we call a lecturer today, and maybe a facilitator or mentor tomorrow, not be available on request over Skype? Let's go one step further: Booz & Company expect the first digital university cooperation to be coming up by the end of this year.
All these tools can help us to develop more effective, more active, more engaging, and much less costly education systems that lead to students who can find, evaluate and apply information, and are able to communicate it across cultures, borders and barriers. The videotaped speeches of Sir Ken Robinson and Mr Mitra on YouTube, for example, show viewers' numbers in the millions - certainly, they didn't remain unrecognised in Thailand.
Peter Glotz stated back in 1999 that our day-to-day reality is full of inconsequence. While most job classifieds look for single fighters, the most important factor of production in any knowledge society is the ability to collaborate. Relevant basic skills are, for instance, complexity management, reasoning and rhetoric, negotiation and mediation, and communication and media. These basic skills play no major role within most current education systems.
There seems to be only one effective barrier preventing us from developing education systems that fit the needs of economies, societies and the individual students: such education models lack any chance to apply doctrine and dogma on active learners.
School education is designed after the university model since the 19th century, just as if becoming a professor would be the highest possible mark one could reach. In their helplessness, many countries focus on standards, rankings and other external measurements, only to make it worse. Many try to copy the Chinese education model, which produces the highest marks in PISA studies. They overlook, however, that since the invention of canons around the year 1250, no major invention came from China. Everything, from electricity to airplanes, from computers to communication tools, was developed in either Europe or the United States. The economic success of China is not a reason to copy their even more ineffective education system.
There's nothing special with Chinese culture, it is just that in China live 20% of the global population whose demand and supply bring China to the top of economic trade. Chinese university presidents complain that their graduates lack creativity, the ability to innovate and that the best still need to leave to study abroad. Only there, in a different environment, many of them turn into top scientists, highly creative and innovative. Should we not think about that a bit more?
Thailand doesn't need 10,000 Einsteins. It needs one Einstein, 10,000 qualified academics, and a skilled workforce of 10 million. Each level of public education has to play its part in this system. With developing a new education system we do not only increase the quality of education but also decrease the cost of education - cheaper while better.
If we start now, we have a good chance to take a global lead, which might well realise the old dream of Thailand becoming an education hub that attracts students from all the countries where public education is becoming increasingly unaffordable, while failing to provide employability.
Is there anybody out there who wants to help us develop a solution that works?
Ulrich Werner is adjunct professor and director of international business development at Asian University in Chon Buri.
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