Threshold Competency of Students in Graduate School

1. Threshold Competency of Students in Graduate School Terada Pinyo

2. Introduction • The world has witnessed the progressive social and economic change, and has stepped into the era of knowledge economy. • Thailand National Development Plan suggests that graduates should be skillful in both academic and professional fields, be adaptable to new career, be able to analyze the information, be skillful in basic technology and be fluent in languages.

3. Introduction(CONT.) • The Thai Qualification for Higher Education Framework (TQF) identifies student’s competency in areas: ethics and morality; knowledge ; cognitive skills; interpersonal skills and responsibility; numerical communication; and Information Technologyskills • In order to transform Thailand to be the knowledgeable society, education is the main equipment. • According to the Graduate School’s 2010 satisfaction survey among graduate and undergraduate students, graduate students were mostly satisfied in categories of morality, professional ethic, basic knowledge and academic excellence.

4. Introduction(CONT.) • The quality of graduate students is the indicator of curriculum’s quality assurance and international standard, which will be used as the key asset to develop Thailand.

5. OBJECTIVE • To find threshold competency of graduate students in the past 3 years.

6. Research Framework Independent Variable Dependent Variable Demography of students in Graduate School Threshold Competency(knowledge and working skills)

7. METHODOLOGY • The sample group of 250 students was calculated by Yamane Formula and separated into sub groups by Stratified Random Sampling method, using program classification. • Variables in this study were divided into 2 groups: Independent variables were the demography of students in gradate school. Dependent variables were the 5 categories of threshold competency.

8. METHODOLOGY (CONT.) • Research tool of this study was the survey of 9 questions, aiming to gain general information of sample groups; and a questionnaire consisted of 40 questions about their competency in 5 categories. • The reliability of this study was proved and had the content validity checked scholars; and got the reliability check with the try-out group, gaining the reliability point at 0.9914.

9. METHODOLOGY (CONT.) • The respondents of questionnaires were 250 graduate students from 2009 – 2011. • The data analysis of the questionnaires was statistically analyzed by computer program, presenting the spread of sample group in demographic way by frequency and percentage. It also showed how sample group thought about their competency skills. The 5-category score was analyzed by mean and standard deviation.

10. Result • 250 graduate students in the sample group mostly are female, with ages between 31-40 years old, earned their master’s degree in political science program with GPA of 3.51-4.00, are now working for state enterprises with the monthly salary below 20,000 Baht, and have been working for less than 10 years.

11. Result(cont.) • The knowledge and skills competency overall were at the high range. When clarifying in each category sorted from high to low: Interpersonal skills and responsibility, ethics and morality, knowledge ; cognitive skills and numerical communication and information technology skills, all of them received the high range score.

12. Recommendation • In order to develop the quality of students in Graduate School, integrated curriculum that involves technical and analytical lesson plan is suggested. • The graduate students’ evaluation should be used together with the curriculum, emphasizing on interpersonal skills, ethics, knowledge and responsibility.

13. Recommendation(cont.) • There should be the self-evaluation among graduate students, and the results should be used as part of the development policy. • There should be the integrated synthesis research about graduate students’ quality.

14. Thank you