Academics
One of SIIT's academic strengths, that the institute often points out in a student recruitment ads, is its high qualification of faculty members. All faculty members are doctoral degree holders, with strong research and/or industrial experiences. From the eyes of general Thai students, they give the value to the institute's up-to-date courses, English as a language of instruction (which means language competency and generally higher salary in the country), and being part of the prestigious Thammasat University. The institute is considered among academic peers as a research intensive engineering school. Research output-wise, on average, each year each SIIT faculty member produces twice the highest value of national range for international journal publications (0.74 vs 0–0.41).
In 2007, the Thailand Research Fund assessed research outcomes of universities in Thailand, and SIIT ranked as "Very Good" for all three indicators, making it the only engineering school in the country to achieved this.
Since a few prospect students can afford considerably higher tuition fees, the institute initially faces a slight difficulty to recruit undergraduate students with very high National Entrance Examination scores. While scholarships and special recruitment programs do help attract many bright students, its average currently-Admission score is still unacceptably low comparing to other leading science and engineering programs in the country — which, in turns, affects the image of the institute in the eyes of Thai students. Due to the latest Admission scores, the school is comparatively easy to enroll the program. The average Admission score of admitted students is among the lowest prospect engineering students.
However, the undergraduate recruitment situation is improving by years, especially for its computer, IT and management-related majors, which now have higher average Admission scores. With its strong science and technology education, the institute has been selected, along with Mahidol University and Chulalongkorn University, by Thailand National Science and Technology Development Agency (NSTDA), as a destination of selected group of top students from Mahidol Wittayanusorn School and 12 Princess Chulaporn Schools for Science, the country's science schools for gifted students, in a program to mentor junior researchers for national science and technology development.
For its graduate levels, the institute attracts a lot of bright graduates, as the institute gains supports from many national and international bodies (and use that as scholarships for graduate students). SIIT is one of a very small number of universities that can secure numbers of Thailand Research Fund's Royal Golden Jubilee grants, considered to be the country's most prestigious research grants for PhD students, for every single year since the program began in 1998 — one of the only three that can secure Engineering discipline grants that often.
Read more about this topic: Sirindhorn International Institute Of Technology
Famous quotes containing the word academics:
“Our first line of defense in raising children with values is modeling good behavior ourselves. This is critical. How will our kids learn tolerance for others if our hearts are filled with hate? Learn compassion if we are indifferent? Perceive academics as important if soccer practice is a higher priority than homework?”
—Fred G. Gosman (20th century)
“Almost all scholarly research carries practical and political implications. Better that we should spell these out ourselves than leave that task to people with a vested interest in stressing only some of the implications and falsifying others. The idea that academics should remain “above the fray” only gives ideologues license to misuse our work.”
—Stephanie Coontz (b. 1944)