Thailand’s Grand Strategy for Higher Education: Reimagining Universities as the Nation’s Brain in the ASEAN Context
Keywords:
Higher Education Policy, Educational Administration, Grand Strategy, Nation Brain System, ASEANAbstract
Thailand’s higher education reform has primarily focused on enhancing university efficiency, establishing quality assurance mechanisms, and aligning with labor market demands. While these initiatives have generated measurable improvements, they remain fragmented and predominantly operational, offering limited contribution to long-term national strategic capacity. This article argues that such limitations stem not from implementation failure but from a constrained conceptualization of universities’ role in national governance.
Drawing on the perspective of Grand Strategy, this study reframes universities as strategic institutions that generate national intelligence rather than merely deliver educational services. Building upon Nayef Al-Rodhan’s triadic intelligence framework (2016), the article introduces the Nation Brain System Model, integrating knowledge intelligence, moral intelligence, and digital intelligence within higher education governance. Within this framework, Thainess is conceptualized as national consciousness, research and artificial intelligence function as enabling cognitive mechanisms, and wisdom emerges as the sustaining condition for long-term societal development.
The article further situates Thailand’s higher education system within the ASEAN strategic environment, proposing that universities operate not only as national cognitive cores but also as interconnected nodes within a regional intelligence network. By linking higher education governance with ethical foundations, digital transformation, and regional connectivity, this study contributes an integrative framework to educational administration and public policy literature, offering strategic direction beyond incremental reform.
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