Group petitions NLA against bill on Thammasat University

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Group petitions NLA against bill on Thammasat University
The Nation



BANGKOK: -- A group from Thammasat University yesterday submitted a petition with 2,702 signatures to the National Legislative Assembly seeking postponement of a legal amendment conferring self-autonomy on the institution.

NLA president Pornphetch Wichitcholchai said the call came too late because the bill had already been vetted and was pending its second and third readings, but he would ask the committee supervising this case to be informed about this petition's details.

The group, led by Sathaporn Senawong, secretary-general of the university's student council, wants information about the bill to be thoroughly understood by those affected first.

Lecturers, students and staff should be able to participate in considering the issues and making recommendations to the NLA, they said.

The amendments of Article 30 should allow at least two student representatives to sit on the University Council and Article 23 should allow expert committee members to serve up to two consecutive terms of three years each, they said.

Source: http://www.nationmultimedia.com/national/Group-petitions-NLA-against-bill-on-Thammasat-Univ-30259577.html


-- The Nation 2015-05-08

[FangFerang]

The article lacks detailing altogether -- and it makes it all very vague to the readership what the protest was about in particular, and what the bill is actually changing..

[orchidlady]

Not from this article obviously....but what we foreign teachers have been told and very little at that, is the university will divest of government funding and become self supporting. The benefits to the older Thai teachers is they can cash out their government funded pensions and still be eligible for pension under the self-funded university. It has been alluded to that we will have more opportunities to develop the curriculum without government interference. They claim we could have higher pay as we will not be capped by government regulations-- no one realistically expects this to happen at least for foreign teachers. Rumors abound of many changes in rules and regulationa regarding our work-will just have to see what happens.