Buying Grades, Selling Souls

Bought grades, sold souls an all-access pass through the halls of higher learning
Published: 2/01/2011 at 12:00 AM Bangkok Post
Voranai Vanijaka

Want a bachelor's degree? One can be had for between 37,000 to 90,000 baht, depending on the institution. There's a service that will hack into a university's computer, insert your name on a degree and voila, you can even join the graduation ceremony.

Want a 3.5 GPA? No problem. A hacker can arrange it. Want to be on the honour roll? Just pay a little more.
In fact, your kids can even obtain a primary school certificate; that's only 5,000 to 8,000 baht.
Too dumb to do an MBA thesis? No problem. For anywhere between 120,000 and 280,000 baht, someone will write one for you.

A friend of mine owns a learning institute (one of the many in the country) that caters specifically to rich little boys and girls who are too stupid to write their own theses, but whose parents nevertheless love them very much. Business is always brisk. Want to have the title ''Dr'' precede your name? A doctoral thesis will cost you just a bit more.

Don't want to cheat too blatantly? Want to at least make the effort of pretending to go to school? No problem, a few Thai institutes of higher learning offer ''pay and pass'' programmes. As long as you pay your tuition, you will graduate.

Unofficial, but highly popular, eight- year programmes are also available so that they can milk as much money from parents as possible.

A colleague of mine, who I refer to as ''the walking encyclopaedia'', is currently writing doctoral theses for a few of the 111 banned politicians. They plan to make their return to politics with a PhD because it will look good to the voters. Business is brisk.

Pay to pass is old news. Hiring a ghost writer to complete a thesis is common, so is the straight-up purchase of a a degree. It's the same old story. The emergence of computer hackers who can give you a degree and put you on the honour roll is just a new twist.

In all of these cases, it is not the sons and daughters who are paying for the grades and degrees. It's the parents. It's not the students who sell the grades and degrees, it's the adults. And oftentimes, it's the teachers, the administrators and the institutions themselves making the profits.

Put all that together with the news in recent months that teachers are failing exams in basic subjects like maths and science, and that they are coming up with substandard questions for the O-Net exam, and what do we get?
Cheating and corruption is the norm at all levels of society, and incompetency is the sum of our failings.

Consequently, both the government and private sectors are replete with executives and ministers, managers and bureaucrats with snazzy overseas degrees on their walls and little of anything in their brains.

It is no wonder then that we are not ready to open our industries to foreign competition. We just don't have the skills or knowledge to compete, even with the fancy degrees. Of course, there are many genuinely brilliant and honest minds in Thailand. But we have to compete as a whole, not by the handful.

I recently finished my first semester of lecturing at a university. There are those students who are brilliant and meticulous. It was a joy to teach them. There are those students who are very creative, but bored to death with education. Give them a project that challenges them and gets their creative juices flowing, and they will dazzle. Give them an assignment or an exam that requires researches and study, and witness an exercise in mediocrity. It is then the job of the educator to find a way to stimulate them.

There are also those students who couldn't care less; those who cheat without batting an eye.
Why?

There's an old but true answer to that question, one that has no boundaries and is not specific to any culture.
From Bangkok to Timbuktu, we know that leaders need to set an example for their followers, that adults must provide an exemplary model that the young can emulate.

Ladies and gentlemen, a typical classroom is simply a mirror-image of the society at large.
Should we be surprised that the young prefer cheating, when the parents are only too eager to help them do so? Should we be shocked that students don't care about education, when teachers aren't qualified to educate?
Constitution Court judges vehemently deny (allegedly) being caught on tape (allegedly) involving them in an (alleged) exam leak scandal, and there's no investigation, no repercussions. Doctors, who have sworn an oath to heal without discrimination, declare that they will refuse to treat patients if a bill that will allow them to be sued for medical malpractice is passed.

Should we be baffled that students display no guilt or remorse when caught cheating?
Cheating politicians are allowed to run in by-elections and return to their posts. Half of the country supports a former prime minister who was found guilty of corruption and who fled the country. The other half supports a prime minister who condones the rampant corruption in his government.

Should we then be perplexed that students believe they could and should get away with cheating?
If, according to an Abac poll, 76.1% of Thais believe that corruption is OK, as long as the country prospers, does that mean adults and parents believe students' cheating is OK, as long as they pass and graduate?

If 16-year-old Orachorn Thephasadin Na Ayudhya (who now claims she is 17) believes that she should get away with hitting a van on the tollway and causing the deaths of nine people, should we only blame the girl and her well-connected family? Or should we recognise the fact that this is how society works _ and that is because we, the Thai people, work it that way?

If we want to solve Thailand's woes, overcome our failings and progress into the brave new world, we need to stop pointing fingers at others and start accepting responsibility for the things we do each and every day of our lives. There can't be a crisis among the younger generation unless the old generation instigates it.
No doubt, there will be those holier-than-thous who will insist, ''Not me! I'm not responsible for any of this! It's all of you! But not me!'' Well, fine.

As for the rest of us, we all have done things we wish we hadn't.
Just last week, I woke up thinking to myself of a deed (or misdeed) that occurred the previous night. I thought, ''Blast it, I hope there wasn't any CCTV around.''
The young will aspire to be whatever the adults show them they could or should be. We adults have set a very poor example.

There will be more mistakes, more failings, but at the end of it all, there are better things that we can do in life.
It's the second decade of the second millennium, and we could and should give the future of the Thai society a second chance by setting a better example for our children, stumbling along the way as we might.

Contact Voranai Vanijaka via email atvoranaiv@bangkokpost.co.th

The day I became a Red Shirt

Since I have never attended any public demonstration of either yellow PAD or red shirts throughout the political turmoil that has descended on Bangkok’s political scene starting from the 2006 coup, I decided to witness the passing of the red caravan today, Saturday, March 20th, 2010. My interest was piqued not only by the unpopular status of the red shirts (the underdogs) as portrayed by the Bangkok Press but also that the Governor of Bangkok, M.R. Sukhumbhand Paribatra, in his infinite wisdom (the M.R. does not stand for Mister, but an honorific title that indicates close consanguinity to royal blood lines) had advised city residents to stay at home Saturday as red-shirt demonstrators are to march through the capital (The Nation, March 19, 2010). I’ve asked myself, is the Governor anti-Red or anti-business or both? Imagine voluntarily staying at home on a Saturday?

I started taking pictures at 10:30AM as I arrived at the Phayathai intersection in Petchburi Road. I noticed that no one was allowed to use the overpass (by what looked like Red security personnel) and the Red convoy used both sides of the Petchburi Road intersection. The flow at the intersection was controlled by the time interval of the traffic lights enforced by a few policemen, as a result of which, the heavy volume of the persistent and noisy red convoy caused crossing traffic along Phayathai Road from both Siam Square and Victory Monument to back up. However, the flow of reds was going quite smoothly with all kinds of vehicles from SUVs bearing Bangkok plates, countless motorcycles, assorted pickups, rented taxis, provincial rot tu, to an occasional but out of place tuktuk.

Contrary to nagging feelings that I was putting myself needlessly in danger (as a foreigner) amidst the “mob” of red shirts who recently committed the shocking blood pouring protest in front of the government and PM houses, a sensation made worse by the enervating vapours emanating from the heat island effect of downtown Bangkok – instead, I was swept by the cathartic experience of witnessing the so called carabaos (khwai), unspohisticated and brainless rural people, the poor and neglected people of this country assert their rights to protest, to be different, disagree with the present government legitimacy and insist on its dissolution. As only Thais are capable of, this was not a sullen crowd, rather a crowd patiently demonstrating to Bangkokians that they were here and willing to sacrifice to camp out in the scorching heat of the nation's capital, its seat of power, to make their voices and discontents heard whether city folks like us welcome them or not. But also more importantly, in that unique Thai celebratory way of “sanuk”, not getting too caught up with the seriousness of intentions or implications of their actions. Horns from a variety of vehicles plus plastic horns (reminiscent of birthday parties or new year's celebrations) were blown in a staccato beat to the cadence of “ook pai” - about the only thing I could make out. I pitied those who were riding at the back of open pickups and trucks, directly exposed to the merciless sun of summer. But they didn’t look dejected or discouraged. Some were dancing unself-consciously gay to the music blared by loudspeakers from trucks and pickups, and shaking vigorously the clappers shaped in the form of white and red hearts or feet as if in a puny way, they could imitate the trumpets of Joshua's Israelite army and bring down the walls of Jericho - the government of Abhisit Vejajiva with the resonant maddeningly cricket-like sounds of these innocuous plastic clappers. I noticed a crowd of bystanders cheering them up, responding with the same clappers to signal their support and encouragement, while others waved their welcome or gave the “thumbs up” gesture.

Tears fell involuntarily – perhaps in a mixture of pity, the underdogs fighting the established wealthy elites and powerful in Bangkok, what chance do they have? And perhaps of hope too sent their way in silent testimony, that the injustices that they have laid bare and the demands for social justice claimed and social wrongs redressed from the uneven development produced by the headlong rush of Thailand and its controlling elites to take advantage of globalization. That at long last, in their own small way, the reds are protesting this monster we call “globalization”.

I should make it clear that seeing through this catharsis, the red cause is wrought with a lot of confusion and contradictions. It must clear itself from association with Mr. Taksin, which in this case is only a means to an end, as a galvanizing issue. But beyond that, it is for the reds to correct the political process in this country with its extreme urban bias that lives off the surplus and the sweat equity of the agricultural sector. Although it may appear that this magnificent convoy of red protest is a masterful strategy to counter the anti-red Thai press by showing Bangkokians first hand the depth of the discontent and anger through sheer numbers, had been subsidized by powers that be who want to manipulate it for their own purposes, I doubt if many red shirts have been completely seduced by the same old patronage tactics. Not in the heat of summer, not when there is no chance of winning, when they are not fighting in their own territory but in the dazzling capital where the inhabitants look down on them as less than human. I am sure that many of them see the complex issue of social change as inextricably tied up to the ebbing influence, power and significance of the monarchy in this day and age and the absence of countervailing democratic institutions that will improve their life chances. One of the nagging problems, as the recent Economist article notes (http://www.economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id=15718981) is precisely the absence of discussion that would allay the deep anxieties of a people long brainwashed by the ideology of indigenous power elites bent on its preservation (no matter how anachronistic), that at least could have prepared the people of eventualities by considering the alternatives. I observed only one vehicle that displayed the photo of HM the King on its window. In terms of symbolism, the Thai flag amidst red banners were much more in common, something that I found truly amazing in a country that without a monarchy is still unthinkable to many.

Tired, exhausted and probably carcinogized by the exhaust of a thousand polluting vehicles, now backed up predictably to a standstill as the convoy head winded its way probably to the traffic choked streets of Lardprao road, I took my last photo at 12:26 PM. Looking in the direction of Yommarat intersection, I would have guessed the tail end of the convoy was at least still another fantastic kilometer away.

Godspeed red shirts!