Success or Failure of the Thai Higher Education Development—Critical Factors in the Policy Process of Quality Assurance
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
General comment
The paper has potential and discusses and important topic “quality education in Thailand” which relates to SDG4 ‘Quality Education’. However, the paper needs to be more organised, there are different lines of argument that are not consistent and make the paper difficult to read. In addition, the results and discussion could improve by referring back to SDG 4 in a more in depth manner.
Specific comments
Correct typos throughout the paper.
Check the English
2nd sentence in the abstract is too long.
Line 28 requires references and could say “studies” instead of “study”.
Line 76 requires explanation and/or reference.
Line 104 and 105 require reference. Not sure where the info is coming from and also may need some explanation as it is not clear what is that you are referring to- it might be that it needs revision of the language used to make it clearer.
There is a bit of a mix between sections. For instance, when I started reading the “ Interviews of the Content Area Experts” I was confused because it mentions the literature review approach. In the results you go back to talking about methods. Each section has to have distinctive content. This issue happens in different areas of the paper. Therefore, each section needs to be revised. You need to make sure that the content of each section refers to the title of the section. Also you need to make sure that each line follows the next one instead of jumping from one topic to another. You need to revise the flow throughout the paper.
Author Response
I am enclosing herewith a manuscript entitled “The Success or Failure of the Thai Higher Education Development? The Critical Factors in the Policy Process of the Quality Assurance” for publication in the Sustainability Journal for possible evaluation.
With the submission of this manuscript, I would like to undertake that all first-round comments from four reviewers have been revised in the manuscript. The detail of the revision is in the summary table attached.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
The authors promise an investigation of the quality of higher education and the SDGs goals. Unfortunately, the SDGs are not included in the analysis. Without them, it is hard to justify a publication in sustainability journal, by exploring the quality of Thai university system.
SDGs must be included, especially in the section 4.3.2 The Outcome of Higher Education Development System in Thailand. The outcomes presented are related only to the positions within international ranking, which are hugely criticised as indicators of quality. See the following paper for eventual quality indicators:
Civera, A., Lehmann, E. E., Paleari, S., & Stockinger, S. A. (2020). Higher education policy: Why hope for quality when rewarding quantity?. Research Policy, 49(8), 104083.
In general, the authors have to specify the standards recognised during the policy process so that it is possible to understand the performance. Are international students, publications, citations, collaborations part of the standards? In the conclusions the graduates production is mentioned as a target. But it is not approached.
Also facts and figures adopted to present the institutional framework (i.e. the Thai HE system at page 4-5) must be improved. Data on students, personnel and funding have to be coherent in reference to the time span analysed. a time trend is necessary to understand if the system is expanding or recessing. The graphs are useless if they do not provide additional information than the text.
The authors are effective in presenting the structure of the paper in the section 4.4.8 Policy implications. I suggest to adopt the same structure through the rest of the paper to better justify the research question they attempt to address.
The choice of Thailand as bed test needs a justification. Why is it interesting? Does it allow a generalisation of the results?
Furthermore the vast majority of statements are without a reference. And the references are reported are manily out of date. I suggest to update the reference literature, especially in the introduction.
Likewise, it is difficult to identify the contribution of the interwiees in framing the policy process, implementation and evaluation.
Fibnally I couldn't find the review of existing literature and policies mentioned at page 6.
Minor comments:
- English needs a proofread
- section 4.1.1 can be renamed as "the rationales behind the policy process"
- a footnote explaining what are the Rajabhat University would be appreciated
Author Response
I am enclosing herewith a manuscript entitled “The Success or Failure of the Thai Higher Education Development? The Critical Factors in the Policy Process of the Quality Assurance” for publication in the Sustainability Journal for possible evaluation.
With the submission of this manuscript, I would like to undertake that all first-round comments from four reviewers have been revised in the manuscript. The detail of the revision is in the summary table attached.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
The paper is written in proper English. The literature review and the framework are appropriate.
Revisions are required:
- Manuscript's references section and in the text should adheres to format of Sustainability. I remark some examples in the text.
- Authors should review the punctuation marks in the text and the template of the Sustainability, specially in the sections and subsections.
- Figures 1, 2 and 3, repeat the information given in the text.
- Acronyms and abbreviations should be defined the first time.
- In line 205 authors refers “in line with the research objectives, But what are these research objectives? They do not have they been defined in advance.
- Figure 5 must be improved. Source?
- To contextualize the research, it would be advisable that authors show the research questions (interviews).
Author Response
I am enclosing herewith a manuscript entitled “The Success or Failure of the Thai Higher Education Development? The Critical Factors in the Policy Process of the Quality Assurance” for publication in the Sustainability Journal for possible evaluation.
With the submission of this manuscript, I would like to undertake that all first-round comments from four reviewers have been revised in the manuscript. The detail of the revision is in the summary table attached.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 4 Report
Review: The success or Failure of the Thai Higher Education Development? The critical Factors in the Policy Process of the Quality assurance
The research carried out in contexts less known by the international scientific community is very welcome since this investigation allow us to expand the spaces of knowledge. In this case, we are offered a vision of higher education in Thailand that is interesting. The difficulties of moving to new educational policies are complex and this research allow us to understand some variables of the process.
The research makes a meticulous journey through a profuse amount of documentation related to the analysis of the quality assurance processes in universities: the quality formulation, implementation, and evaluation policies. As authors explain, regarding all above aspects, the need for educational reform was so intense in Thai society that many bills were drafted by different organizations. The methodological approach allows the discussion of any underlying issues that have resulted in a policy success or failure and its causes. The documentary analysis methodology seems perfect to us inasmuch as it achieves a structured and orderly path consistent with its objective: emphasizing that policy change occurs when three currents, problems, political and political issues, are connected. In short, it is a very good review and careful analysis of existing literature and policies.
The question that raises doubts is the qualitative approach centered on interviews. The interviewees included three expert groups involved in quality assurance processes and policies: policymakers, agencies, specialists / expertise, lectures. We think that it is a good selection of participants. However, the encoding process is somewhat fuzzy. It would have helped us to know the matrix of codes designed for the analysis of the interviews. As the authors describe the methodology: “a matrix was created” that showed the relationships between topics, and between subtopics. This question would have required a visualization of the elaborated matrix, or a better explanation of the categorization process.
We can deduce in the presentation of results that the findings referred to the points 4.1 The Policy Formulation Process: The Establishing of Quality Assurance Policy; 4.2.The Policy Implementation Process: A Deployment within Regulations and agencies; 4.3 The Policy Evaluation Process: The Parliament Reviewing and The Outcome of 20 Years, are obtained through the documentary analysis carried out.
The results of the analysis and categorization of the interviews are only used for the last topic of the results: 4.4. Analysis of Critical Factors Involved in the Quality Assurance Policy where we find some quotes from the interviews.
La conclusion about the outcome of Higher Education development system in Thailand is that there was no improvement in quality, even though the educational quality assurance system was adopted in 1999. The discontinuity of policy implementation and other factors, such as the redundancy of bureaucratic system are well analyzed.
Synthesizing, leaving aside the possibility of an improvement in the explanation of the methodological procedure followed, it can be considered to be a manageable, interesting, and straightforward research. The reading is agile and very focused on the subject. The results are presented in a clear and understandable way. Overall, the article is cohesive in a relevance case research.
Author Response
I am enclosing herewith a manuscript entitled “The Success or Failure of the Thai Higher Education Development? The Critical Factors in the Policy Process of the Quality Assurance” for publication in the Sustainability Journal for possible evaluation.
With the submission of this manuscript, I would like to undertake that all first-round comments from four reviewers have been revised in the manuscript. The detail of the revision is in the summary table attached.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 2 Report
Originality, novelty, and contributions are still too limited.
Author Response
Dear reviewer,
I am enclosing herewith a manuscript entitled “The Success or Failure of the Thai Higher Education Development? The Critical Factors in the Policy Process of the Quality Assurance” for publication in the Sustainability Journal for possible evaluation.
With the submission of this manuscript, I would like to undertake that all second-round comments from reviewer have been revised in the manuscript.
Comment: Originality, novelty, and contributions are still too limited.
Response: The “Interpreting the findings” has been added in the section 4.5 at the line 1016.
