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Thailand Social Mobility
The expansion of the bureaucracy and the military and the
movement of the Thai into a rapidly growing private sector
created opportunities for social mobility, although the major
part of the population remained rural workers or moved into
low-level occupations in the urban labor force. Associated with
upward mobility, given the Thai orientation toward bureaucratic
careers, was the availability of education. Expansion of
education facilities beyond the secondary level occurred in the
early 1970s. In 1961, for example, about 42,000 full-time and
part-time students were enrolled in 6 higher education
institutions, but by 1972 there were roughly 72,000 in more than
a dozen institutions. The oldest and most prestigious
universities, such as Chulalongkorn, Thammasat, and Mahidol, were
in Bangkok. Many students attended universities outside Thailand,
but these were more likely to be the children of Thai or Chinese
who had already attained a fairly high socioeconomic position.
Education was necessary for entry into the bureaucracy, but
other capabilities or characteristics, including political
reliability and involvement in the patron-client system, also
played a part in upward mobility within the bureaucracy. In the
military, the system played perhaps a greater role than
education. Military expertise as such did not seem to be an
important consideration.
The sangha offered a special avenue of social mobility
to some of the sons of the peasants at the base of Thailand's
socioeconomic pyramid. Positions in the upper tiers were filled
by examination, and monks were offered higher education at two
Buddhist universities (Mahachulalongkorn and Mahamongkut), which
by the 1960s included significant secular components in their
curricula. The Buddhist education system provided support for its
talented students through the highest level; access to these
opportunities by villagers might reflect the declining interest
among the urban classes and the provincial middle group in a
career in the sangha. The social mobility achieved through
the sangha was not necessarily limited to those who were
lifetime monks. Monks who left the sangha in their
thirties and forties could legitimately enter other careers, and
their education and experience in the sangha were helpful.
By the mid-1970s, the number of aspirants to the bureaucracy
with undergraduate and even graduate degrees had begun to exceed
the number of openings. Moreover, the economy was no longer
expanding as it had in the 1960s and early 1970s
(see Economic and Financial Development
, ch. 3). Opportunities for upward
mobility had lessened in the early 1980s, and children of
families already established in the upper or middle reaches of
the socioeconomic system were able to maintain their head start
in a system that was no longer growing so rapidly.
Data as of September 1987
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