Financial Sustainability in Mission-Differentiated Regional Universities: Exploratory Evidence from Thailand’s Rajabhat System

บทคัดย่อ

Mission-differentiated universities—institutions legally mandated to prioritize regional development over research commercialization, distinct from conventional autonomous research universities—face significant financial sustainability challenges that warrant context-specific analysis. This exploratory study investigates the patterns associated with financial sustainability in Thailand’s 32 Rajabhat Universities (2021–2023, N = 96 institution-years), a network operating under centralized civil service frameworks. Integrating resource dependency theory with mission-sustainability balance constructs, this research employs dynamic random effects models on a short post-pandemic panel to examine how internal efficiency and external resources relate to multi-dimensional sustainability outcomes. The analysis identifies three exploratory patterns. First, administrative intensity shows the most consistent negative association across sustainability dimensions (elasticities range from -1.20 to -1.81), suggesting that mission proliferation and civil service rigidities may contribute to resource misallocation. Second, revenue diversification and government support exhibit non-significant effects, indicating that strategies typically effective in urban research universities may not transfer directly to regional mission-differentiated contexts characterized by geographic remoteness and high government dependency (67%). Third, sustainability exhibits strong path dependence, with lagged coefficients (0.52–0.97) suggesting that historical financial positions substantially influence current outcomes. The findings suggest two actionable pathways for mission-differentiated institutions: (1) establishing inter-university consortia for shared administrative services to address cost pressures from civil service rigidity, and (2) transitioning toward outcome-based funding formulas with base viability guarantees. Given the short observation window, these patterns warrant corroboration through extended longitudinal studies. This exploratory research provides context-specific insights that complement rather than replace existing best-practice frameworks, supporting Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) 4, 10, and 17 while addressing gaps in the literature on higher education finance in developing nations.