12 October 2020
Reference : Office of Research Affairs https://www.research.chula.ac.th/news/9729/
Although the global rank of university is changeable each year, it is good to know that this year Chulalongkorn University (Chula) has the good ranking results of all the three famous global ranking systems compared to the year before. In the QS World University Rankings 2021, where Chula is among the world’s top 100 universities for academic reputation, the university moves from 247 to 208, in the THE World Ranking, Chula moves from 801-1000 to 601-800, and in the THE Impact Ranking (focusing on sustainable development) Chula is ranked 101-200 for first-year submission. All of the three are the first ranked among the university in Thailand. The impressive ranking results stems from the determination of Chula to be the national research university that leads ‘innovations for society.’
Amidst research budget constraints and expectations for the role to solve the national agenda in addition to moving the university upwards to the top global ranking, Chulalongkorn University has been demonstrating the academic potential to pave the way for world-class research by developing the COVID-19 vaccine in many ways. Two leading opportunities for COVID-19 Vaccine accomplishment: one by the Center of Vaccine, Chulalongkorn University’s Faculty of Medicine, and the other by Bai-ya Phyto Farm, a medical research start-up company from the Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences. In addition, the University has been innovating several medical technologies such as Robots for helping doctors and nurses in COVID-19 situation, COVID-19 Strip Test, and others.
Recognition has been accepted both at the international and national levels. National recognition appears that the government has granted partial funding to support R&D for COVID-19 vaccine candidates to Chulalongkorn University. When comparing the universities around the world that have been reporting themselves to have the opportunity to produce a vaccine for COVID-19, the budgets of those universities are significantly higher than that of the proposed budget for Chulalongkorn University and are incomparable.
The opportunity to make this kind of research possible is to invest in various kinds of research ecosystems and platforms with a significant amount of budget to lift up existing frontier research to encompass the desirable goal. The government budget and granting research system to leading university in Thailand currently need to be reinvented. The constraints of budget approval authority may come from various means such as total budget constraint, budget distribution to make overall satisfaction, difficulty to prioritize which research is more important, traditional budget approval system, and others.
The concept of a multi-year block grant with a sandbox system has been mentioned several times as one key solution to the problem. When the Ministry of Higher Education, Sciences, Research, and Innovation was established, the program budgeting namely “Reinventing University” emerged. It sheds the light on hope to have a multi-year block grant with a sandbox system to enhance the university for global recognition. Although there was no such grant and system in the budget programs for 2020 and 2021, the current project of calling for submitting a proposal for the 2022 budget program is certainly an opportunity for the government to implement the multi-year block grant with a sandbox system. Seeing the research universities through the window of opportunity may capture a new approach to budget approval decision-making. Evidence of one university, two opportunities for COVID-19 Vaccine accomplishments may not yet reach their destination at present since a vaccine product has not been on the actual used. Nevertheless, this phenomenon urges the government to be enthusiastic to see the innovative productivity of the university and provide support to leverage research universities to reach the goal that it should be. It is time to reinvent the budgeting system to support research universities for global innovations.
Vithaya Kulsomboon, Director of The Second Century Fund Office