The Empirical Study on the Activity Development Threats of Tertiary Institutes in Three Southern Border Province of Thailand

Abstract

This study aimed to investigate the threats of the student activity development of the tertiary institutes in three Southern Border Provinces (SBP) of Thailand. The informants consisted of the eight researchers who were regarded as having the high quality studies; they all had a wealth of experiences in (SBP) student activity managements. The research tools employed in this study were semi-structured interviews and evaluation forms, which were all prepared for participating experts. They then provided the information on the overall spatial environment relating to the student activity development of the (SBP) tertiary institutes. The results of this study were divided into two main sections. First, it was threats of the student activity development which is also divided in five sub points as follows. 1) It was found that some student activity developments were incongruent with the Islam principles and local cultures. 2) The unrest in these three border provinces had lowered the number of future students from other regions and from different cultures. Thus, the higher education in these provinces became a single culture. 3) Some groups of people trying to persuade students and arouse their nationalism. 4) The Thai language competence of current undergraduate students in these three provinces was relatively limited. 5) The universities in these provinces received the policy from the central government; they did take neither limitations nor uniqueness of local population into account. In terms of the second section, the study found out that the student activity development of tertiary institutes in these three southern provinces regarding the overall experts ‘comments on threats, it was noticeably seen that the informants’ responses in a majority of questions had high levels of strong agreement.