Counting to the 18th anniversary of Rajamangala University of Technology Phra Nakhon on last January 18, 2022, a higher institution of professional and technical, has the vision to be a university of inspiration, systematic thinking, technological expertise, and social services.
Today we have an exclusive interview with Dr. Natworapol Rachsiriwatcharabul, the President of Rajamangala University of Technology Phra Nakhon about the vision of RMUTP in near future. The President is said that RMUTP aims to be an ideal university for surviving in the long term. To develop our university, we must manage our learning management for diverse and cover all field of expertise, especially to meet the needs
of the labor market which require manpower development in industry and digital services, smart electronic industry, electronic vehicle, and railway system, transportation industry and logistic, including short courses for real-life application and open opportunities for educational elevation.
Nowadays, RMUTP has various groups of students, including working people from the labor market who want to reskill or upskill. Students can earn their credits by studying in the university system or through Non-formal Education, Informal Education, and Experiential Learning to award certificates, diplomas, and degrees. So, students can improve their skills in some specific fields that they need, following the university guideline of being a lifelong learning institution. However, we must develop our university public space for encouraging our students to have perfect students’ life.
“In my opinion, education opens opportunities for the student to choose their study field. If we manage general education in an old way like our graduates should find themselves what they want to be, it doesn’t meet educational competition nowadays. I believe in supply chain production which is straight to the point of the needs of entrepreneurs and the labor market. We have to realize what is our strengths and produce our graduates to meet the needs of that specific expertise in the labor market, especially our strength of we have long-term famous in education management at both vocational and high vocational levels, and all 3 degrees of bachelor, master, and doctorate. We have to monitor all craftmanship expertise in vocational education because it meets the needs of the labor market. However, we have to manage a new curriculum to support new careers in the future by focusing on the agricultural industry, food industry, healthcare industry, and good health and well-being development that we are going through aging society. So, we have to find a way of our curriculum production, specify lecturer expertise and learning tools, and all of our learning systems”. The president said.
“Moreover, our university has to have a good collaboration with industrial partnership and the labor market. We will acknowledge and exchange bilateral information of what is their expectation in our university and which kind of prospective graduates they want. So, we have to produce our graduates to serve them. In past, RMUTP Image was blamed that our graduates were unable to do anything and needed to learn all new skills again. Now, we cooperate with our industrial partners to produce our graduates at the beginning of their studies and create their working network. We also accompany with all 9 RMUTs’ Network in some fields for using joint laboratory and exchanging information, including with making international cooperation to achieve in international level.” The president continued.
“Another main issue is RMUTP will transform to be ‘Public Autonomous University but haven’t set the date yet. We should evaluate our performance. People are concerned that transforming into a public autonomous university would cause difficulties, especially in university stability. However, our world was changed. Our survival path is to support our organization to have enough competency in educational competition by having budget flow management that would respond to the needs of labor. The first thing that we have to do is we would understand our people in our organization about their effects, and what will happen next and promise them that we will leave no one behind. However, until now no one has objected to this issue. They are only asking me about its progression and want to participate in this progress.”
Now, we are facing the pandemic of COVID-19 around the world which affects Thailand’s educational system and changed a new trend of educational management to be online learning. Dr. Natworapol is said that COVID-19 has affected Thailand’s education in both positive and negative aspects. In the negative aspect, it has a restriction of small public gatherings that we have to postpone some activities and change the learning system to be online learning. In contrast, the positive aspect is we accustomed to using technology to support our work and we are ready to cope with another crisis that would reflect the flexibility of the organization.
Lastly, we have to expect the possibility of RMUTP to achieve goals under the leadership of “Dr. Natworapol Rachsiriwatcharabul, with his slogan “University helps peoples’ dreams come true”. For someone who has no inspiration, they would create by themselves and give a promise to RMUTP officers to open-minded, step-forward together as the quote of Pubilius Syrus said “No one knows what he can do until he tries.”