Development of Udon Thani Rajabhat University to be a Local Development University

Abstract

The objectives of this research were: 1) to study the future development for Udon Thani Rajabhat University as a local development university, 2) to evaluate the possibility of development of the University, and 3) to study the impacts of the development on a local development University of Udon Thani Rajabhat University. The research had been divided into three phases as follows:

            Phase I was the development of the university to become a local development university. The researcher utilized the EDFR (Ethnographic Delphi Futures Research) technique based on the informants 48 academics’ snowballing response to the semi-structured interview form with five-level rating scales. There was manual collection of data, correspondence collection, and the data analysis using the program for a frequency, percentage, mean, interquartile range, and differences between mode values and the median. The findings showed that there were 14 aspects regarding the development of Udon Thani Rajabhat University to become a local development university as follows: (1) the future scenarios of local situations, (2) the university for local development, (3) the university components for local development, (4) the university development in accordance with the sufficiency economy philosophy, (5) the linkages of educational management of the University and other educational levels, (6) the University’s problem-solving and the clustering of universities, (7) the networking of higher education among universities, (8) the good governance and university administration, (9) the development of university competitiveness, the research system and innovations, the body of knowledge aimed at local problems, and the sources of local wisdom, (10) the university financing, (11) the development system for professors and university personnel, (12) the development of students on an integrative basis, (13) the university infrastructure for supporting learning, and (14) the quality and standard of the university education.

            Phase II was the evaluation on the possibility of development of the university as a local development university. The informants were 111 university administrators. The researcher used a purposively sampling and also applied the five-level-rating scales with the reliability level of 0.985, correspondence collection, data analysis using the program for a frequency, percentage, mean, and standard deviation. The result revealed that the evolution of Udon Thani Rajabhat University to become a local university was found to be a very high possibility level.

          Phase III was the impacts of the University as a local development university of Udon Thani Rajabhat University. The informants were 52 university administrators and a purposive sampling was taken. The research instruments used a five-level rating scale questionnaire with a percentage. The data was collected and analyzed with cross-section. The result revealed that the impacts of the development on a local development university of Udon Thani Rajabhat University consisted of 7 aspects; 1) the development of university competitiveness for research and innovations, the building of the body of knowledge for local problems, the data sources, and the local wisdom, which had an impact on other 9 aspects, 2) university financing affecting other 6 aspects of development, 3) the quality and standard of university education affecting the development of 5 aspects, 4) the developing system for professors and university personnel affecting the development of 4 aspects, 5) the local development of university in accordance with the sufficiency economy philosophy affecting three aspects of development, 6) the development of students on the integrative basis affecting the development of 3 aspects, 7) the university infrastructure in supporting learning process affecting three aspects of developments.