Academics and universities should not be forced to prove that they help local communities, and it is better to build a consensus with governments about the best way to instil social responsibility, a minister has said.

Thailand¡¯s minister of education, Teerakiat Jareonsettasin, was asked during the British Council¡¯s Going Global conference whether universities should be obliged to sign up to some kind of corporate social responsibility rules.

¡°Then you may get bad [corporate social responsibility]. People, particularly academics, are not going to be compelled to do things,¡± Dr Jareonsettasin told a plenary session of the international higher education event, being held in Kuala Lumpur.

His comments came after he had also told the audience that ¡°one thing I have learned for sure is that central planning [in higher education] doesn¡¯t work¡­and I think it has been proven now internationally¡±. This was one reason why he had sought new laws in the country to make it possible for overseas universities to set up in Thailand.

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Challenged by a member of the audience on whether this meant that existing public universities in south-east Asia should also have more freedom, he said that universities in Thailand were already autonomous and ¡°in fact the tension is that the government sees [them] as too autonomous¡±.

During the session, Dr Jareonsettasin also encouraged leaders in universities and governments to be more decisive in the directions they took on policy and strategy.

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¡°In life there will always be competing demands. In order to strike the right balance, you have to take some actions, to take some decisions,¡± he said.

¡°As a minister, I [think] that no decision is going to be completely disastrous if you can monitor it closely. But often people in leadership positions, they wait for reports¡­they wait on and on until they have a convincing plan.¡±

The same session also heard from Wim de Villiers, vice-chancellor of Stellenbosch University in South Africa.

Reflecting on the major student protests in the country that led to a change of government policy on tuition fees, he criticised the tendency to think of students as all having the same opinions.

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Professor de Villiers said he was ¡°somewhat annoyed when it was said during the protests that ¡®you don¡¯t talk to the students¡¯.

¡°What does that mean? Are we referring to students as a homogeneous like-minded population. It is not that at all. It is an incredibly disparate, diverse group of interests and opinions. To refer to students as a homogeneous body is very simplistic.¡±

simon.baker@timeshighereducation.com