Conclusion and Beyond
In summary, Thailand has relatively good opportunities and difficult challenges in terms of youth empowerment. The government must come up with appropriate policies/measures to take advantage of the declining proportion of the youth population. The government should intensively invest on them so that they will become the productive human resources of Thailand who drive the sustainable economic growth under the ageing population. To empower youth population, the government and the higher education institutions in Thailand should cooperatively develop the training programs for students to empower them during their school years.
For example, students should be encouraged to attend the cooperative education during their school years in order to capture practical work experience and enhance skills. With the cooperative education, youth population will have an opportunity both to network with employers and to experience work in their chosen field. Furthermore, the cooperative education will help youth population to make the school-to-work transition, service learning and experiential learning initiatives. Therefore, youth population is more likely to become the human capital, whose knowledge and skills are suitable to the labor market, leading to the higher productivity and competitiveness of the nation. Besides the cooperative education, high schools and collages should provide students the appropriate training program to develop their knowledge and skills. Additionally, the curriculums in high school and college should be revised to provide students more chances to learn by doing. Such curriculums will help promote creativity and other cognitive and communicative skills for students, helping them become the productive human resources in the future.
Moreover, the government needs to find ways to decrease the disparity in education among the youth population in different regions, especially in remote provinces and to provide suitable/appropriate education arrangement for stateless children in the nation. Additionally, the government should focus on higher education development at the regional level to reduce/minimize the migration of youth population to Bangkok. To solve these problems, the government needs to invest more on educational development in the