Thai students in the Netherlands
Roobeah Songshi (23) from Thailand and Khoi Tran (24) from Vietnam graduated in Apeldoorn
In recent posts on this blog, attention has been paid to education in Thailand, which – in the opinion of many – leaves much to be desired.
Education in Thailand is outdated with poor teaching methods, low level of teaching staff, etc. If Thailand wants to keep up with the pace of Asian peoples, education will have to improve drastically.
Like other Dutch people who live in Thailand, this problem also concerns me. Our son, who is now 11 years old, goes to a good school, Darasamutr in Sri Racha, but the care starts when he has to follow higher education. Someone said on this blog perhaps somewhat jokingly, but with a serious undertone, that he might have to move to the Netherlands with his Thai family. That is certainly not an option for me, so I started searching the Internet for alternative options.
If our son is good enough, he can follow further education in the Netherlands. On the Internet I came across a surprising amount of interesting and good information against the possibility of Thai students in the Netherlands. The most important source for the time being is that of Neso Nuffic in Bangkok, which provides a great deal of information on its website about study options in the Netherlands. This organization is an NGO, which is mainly financed by the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The European Commission and the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science also bear part of the costs.
Nuffic Neso Thailand therefore does a lot of promotion and information and also uses so-called Holland Alumni Ambassadors for this purpose. Check out their website for more information. An instruction course was recently given again in Ayudthaya, where 13 Thai alumni (former students who studied in the Netherlands) were appointed Ambassadors.
At the moment there are already 300 Thais studying in the Netherlands at Universities and Colleges and many more have preceded that. Thai students in the Netherlands have their own organization and website (www.thaistudents.nl) and ex-students in Thailand are also united in the Netherlands Alumni Association Thailand (NAAT).
For me it is not yet that far to request concrete information, but it would be interesting if readers of this blog would share their possible experiences in this area with us.
For readers who live in the Netherlands, I found another nice website: Travelactive Have a look at this and maybe it's a nice idea to take a Thai student in for a while.