5. APLICACIÓN/PRACTICA
5.1.12. INCORPORANDO RIESGO Y TASAS DE RECUPERACIÓN
In this part, data were obtained from interview respondents from the Graduate School and Research Development Centre about their broad view of the university’s research environment and the factors that cause low research productivity are presented.
The Noble University operates under the umbrella of the Ministry of Education’s and the Thai Higher Education Commission’s policy framework. Research is important because it is central to the university’s mission and activities, and it is important to all lecturers who want to retain in their academic
status. Lecturers should carry out research in order to develop their teaching ability, because they acquire new knowledge in their area when investigating practical problems. The knowledge that derives from doing research has high value for communities and private enterprises, allowing Thailand to gain significant benefits for national development.
The research work carried out in the Noble University can be classified into three main groups. First, there is an individual or a group that does creative research. Second, there are research groups that aim to bring benefits to production process and strategic policy. Third, there are research groups that aim to develop and improve conditions in the community. To facilitate these groups, the institution is attempting to create a research culture by building a supportive research environment, and by providing academic knowledge exchange through encouraging students and lecturers to work together.
Because of its history, the Noble University has two main types of lecturers who are involved with research activities. Case one informed the project that the lecturers who have taught in this university since this institution was a teaching college generally have low competency to carry out research and they are generally not interested in doing research. In contrast, newly appointed lecturers who have research skills, especially those lecturers who have graduated from abroad, are keen to be involved in research projects. They actively seek research funding and continually seek possibilities to do research.
In the past, this university has carried out little research, but recently the number of research works is slightly increasing. An insight into the reason behind this improvement of research productivity was given by Case one, who stated that research productivity is now a criterion for promotion and researchers received salary bonuses that can be an incentive. In addition, each faculty’s administrators are now trying to build a supportive research environment.
However, some lecturers argued that the research environment is not supported enough. As Case two revealed:
The research environment is not so active and is ambiguous because the University treats all lecturers the same. The University does not categorise lecturers into highly qualified or
under qualified staff. For instance, Professor and Associate Professor have the same treatment as new lecturers.
This approach means that it is the duty of all lecturers to find the funds and time to do research individually because University does not provide specific opportunities to researchers. The difficulty with this is that usually the highly experienced professorial lecturers have so much work to perform, in that some of them have to teach, to do research and do administrative work that it is unreasonable for them to find the extra time for research. Case Two continued this theme, stating that:
Universities in other countries treat experienced lecturers differently from a new one. Experienced lecturers, who have expertise in doing research, generally perform less teaching and research is their main task. But in this University, the lecturers have to teach, while research is a personal responsibility to which those lecturers must donate their free time.
At the Noble University, this remains an unsolved problem. It highlights that the qualified lecturers who are likely to do research are faced with the problem of unclear and competing task priorities. At the same time, the lower qualified staff who generally do not prefer to do research tasks, are in the position where the university also does not encourage them. Under these conditions, there is the question of how either type of lecturer can efficiently contribute to the research productivity of the university.
Furthermore, some lecturers appear to ignore the importance of research. To them, the research outcomes have no benefit because no one is interested. As Case two pointed out:
There are still some lecturers who view research work as a useless task. Published research work is usually on top of the shelf and no one requests it.
In addition, there are many lecturers who have little research experience and each faculty has limited research productivity. Consequently, the number of lecturers’ works published, or invitations to lecturer at an international level, is
low. Adding to the difficulty is that it is a considerable task to solve and eliminate obstructions to doing research, which is currently not being addressed at a centralised level. Also, some lecturers actually misunderstand the nature of the research task, thinking that research works must necessarily involve a huge project. Case three, for example, said:
Many lecturers believe if they undertake research, it must be on a large scale to enhance their reputation. There is little interest in undertaking small projects. And sometimes they might not have much persistence with their research.
According to the opinions outlined above, the broad view of factors that impact on staff and contribute to low research productivity in the case institution relate to (i) the working environment, (ii) individual staff attitudes and perspectives toward research performance, and (iii) the overall academic workload. As a result, although the university publicly states its aims to increase its research productivity, the actual outcomes are still at a low level. In the next section, the data findings will draw attention to aspects of each Faculty’s research performance in more detail.