Studying in the UK (1) - Do Not Come

 (This is the first of a series on studying in the UK).

The best way to save your parents’ money as you prepare for that one year Masters course in England is a single thought people rarely consider. Just don’t go to England – or anywhere abroad.

In fact, don’t even do a Masters. The fixed preconception in every single upper middle class Thai parent’s head is that once your son or daughter has graduated from the required undergraduate degree in Thailand, embellishing it with a degree from abroad is a requirement. The wealthiest of those will send their children to the UK or the US. Others opt for Australia, and recently, India.

While in the UK, I’ve watched Thai students come and go over the years and have been saddened at the level of unpreparedness many Thai students coming to the UK display. A discomforting number are unable to complete a single sentence without making a major grammatical error. Many more are unable to fully understand a chapter in an academic book. Most struggle with coursework that English Masters students usually breeze through.

This is not because Thai students are intellectually in adequate or lazy. While not claiming that  this blogger is beyond reproach, I dare boil the failure of many Thai students down to three primary reasons.

The first reason is the most obvious: Thai students’ extremely substandard English.  I remember reporting several years ago how Thai students, as a whole, averaged among the lowest scores in the TOEFL exam in Asia. I refused to let myself believe that this was true, but I get a shock every single year when I see the new group of Thai students arriving.

While there was no doubt that several were mature, and most would probably make it through their courses through perseverance, the level of English many Thai students in the UK portray are little better than a 6^th grader at an English speaking school. Worse is that most Thai students group together and, well, speak Thai. Most leave England with the same level of English they arrived with.

The second reason is less spoken of, but painfully obvious to a select group of Thais who spend a little less time taking things for granted: poor analytical skills and cultural differences. Thailand’s multiple choice exams are a poor basis for analytical skills.

Compounded with the reluctance to question authority and to intelligently debate issues, Thai students in the UK are at a loss when asked to do literature reviews and to argue a case in their coursework. Ask a university student walking around Siam Square for their opinion on whether Thailand’s coup has been good (or bad) for democracy, and you’ll know exactly what I mean.

In other words, don’t come if you don’t know what you want in your life. A degree from abroad does not guarantee you a better job if you still don’t know how to use your brains to actually *think*.  A degree is supposed to be an award for being able to use your knowledge.

Owning a degree, unfortunately, does not mean you actually possess any knowledge. One of the worst kept secrets in English academia is that the response of many English universities to the inadequacy of international students is to ‘dumb down’ the Masters courses so that most would pass. This results in continued applications from international students. Failing students means that the university gets a poor reputation and few applications next year. That’s about £10,000 a head, triple what the English students pay.

In summary, don’t go to England unless you’re one of the exceptions to the rule and can overcome the three given common failings of Thai students in the UK.  If you feel that you can work on being an exception, come back to this blog, and perhaps we can work on something together.