Khon Kaen University (KKU) Thailand

History

Khon Kaen Uni­ver­sity (KKU) was estab­lished as the major uni­ver­sity in the North­east­ern part of Thai­land in 1964 and has devel­oped itself to become one of the top uni­ver­si­ties in Thai­land. Khon Kaen Uni­ver­sity has recently become one of the nine national research uni­ver­si­ties in Thai­land and an edu­ca­tional cen­ter in the Mekong sub-​region. The university’s major mis­sion is to pre­pare future global cit­i­zens to work in a con­tin­u­ally chang­ing world. KKU’s strate­gic goal is to be rec­og­nized both inter­na­tion­ally and region­ally as a lead­ing uni­ver­sity in research. KKU cur­rently has more than 40,000 stu­dents study­ing in 17 fac­ul­ties, 1 satel­lite cam­pus, 1 school, and 3 col­leges and in 43 International/​English pro­grams which cover a wide vari­ety of disciplines.

Our cam­pus serves as the lead­ing edu­ca­tional and learn­ing cen­tre of the North­east­ern region. It is con­ve­niently located a few kilo­me­ters from the cen­ter of the city and is sit­u­ated on a large, safe, and attrac­tive site of green fields mea­sur­ing 900 hectares. KKU has excel­lent facil­i­ties and thus pro­vides its stu­dents with an envi­ron­ment con­ducive to learn­ing and with the proper sup­port to achieve aca­d­e­mic suc­cess. Addi­tion­ally, KKU takes an investment-​minded approach to edu­ca­tion by pro­vid­ing funds for stu­dents to pur­sue their goals of higher edu­ca­tion through study and research.

Facts and Figures

• 22 Fac­ul­ties and Col­leges with more than 2,200 aca­d­e­mic staff and 8,500 sup­port­ing staff
• 40,000 stu­dents includ­ing 10,000 post­grad­u­ates and 500 over­seas students
• 340 study pro­grams (101 Under­grad­u­ate pro­grams, 138 in Mas­ters Degree programs,
• 77 in Doc­toral Degree pro­grams and 24 Grad­u­ate Diploma programs)
• 43 Inter­na­tional programs

Research

Khon Kaen Uni­ver­sity – Research Cen­ter of Excellence

Khon Kaen Uni­ver­sity (KKU)’s vision to become a lead­ing world –class uni­ver­sity is in line with the mis­sion that KKU has been assigned to be the “Cen­ter of knowl­edge” based on the wis­dom of local com­mu­ni­ties and soci­ety, together with the com­mit­ment as a uni­ver­sity of aca­d­e­mic excellence.

Sev­eral work­ing agen­cies have been estab­lished in all fields to estab­lish mis­sion goals for research and tech­nol­ogy trans­fer in line with the goal to develop the uni­ver­sity as a research cen­ter of aca­d­e­mic excellence.

These agen­cies include the Office of Research Man­age­ment, the Office of Royally-​initiated Projects and a total of 25 research cen­ters of excel­lence and research spe­cial­ist groups, 20 research cen­ters and groups sup­port­ing and pro­mot­ing research to uni­ver­sity staff and per­son­nel which are also pro­vided with research funds from KKU’s 40^th year anniver­sary estab­lish­ment of its Research Fund, and other fund­ing sources. These research cen­ters aim to help sup­port and pro­mote the research work of uni­ver­sity per­son­nel and staff.

Addi­tion­ally, KKU has estab­lished more research work­ing bod­ies to col­lab­o­rate with orga­ni­za­tions out­side the uni­ver­sity, both pub­lic and pri­vate orga­ni­za­tions. At present, the Uni­ver­sity has part­ner­ships with more than 160 national and inter­na­tional research orga­ni­za­tions from 25 coun­tries. There are also exchange pro­grams for KKU stu­dents, per­son­nel, pro­vided with full equip­ment, knowl­edge, labs and other kinds of bod­ies of knowledge.

Out­stand­ing research work of KKU

• Med­i­cine, Pub­lic Health and Trop­i­cal Medicine/​Trop­i­cal Dis­ease Research Lab­o­ra­tory (TDR)
• Agri­cul­ture and trop­i­cal farm­ing sys­tems (ani­mal sci­ence, plant science)
• Bio-​diversity in the Mekong River basin
• Arts, Cul­ture and soci­ety in the Greater Mekong sub-​region (GMS)
• Busi­ness, eco­nomic and tourism in the Greater Mekong Sub-​region (GMS)