After all the drama and controversy circulated both online and offline, people may now notice that the scandal surrounding a US-based Thai dentist is now just another bit of news that has faded from public interest.
The story made headlines and became the talk of the town in early February after the student received a 30 million baht loan towards her Master's and PhD at a prestigious US university in 1993, on the condition that she return and teach at a university in Thailand.
However, after completing her PhD she failed to return to teach as required by the condition of the loan and is now working in the US. Meanwhile, her four guarantors are now left to pay off the debt.
This is not the first time there has been such a report about a person refusing to repay their education loan. There have been a lot of students refusing to pay off their debts, so much so that this has become the norm.
Thammasat University recently admitted that it has also faced a similar situation. And so have various educational institutes in Thailand.
Even the state's Educational Loan Funds, a fund that offers loans to underprivileged students, has seen a number of borrowers who have failed to pay back their debts. The situation has remained bad for years until the fund management decided to seek help from a debt collector company. In 2014, the funds got 800 million baht back from borrowers but the amount rose to five billion baht last year. Moreover, it confiscated assets of 786 borrowers who failed to pay back their debt.
Eventually, the fund management offers options for good borrowers such as lowering interest rates or blacklisting bad borrowers from conducting any financial transactions in the Kingdom.
This is a failure of education. Education is supposed to improve people. But why have those scholars who received the chance to develop their knowledge and skills failed to develop their moral standards?
It is acceptable if those who borrow from Educational Loan Funds find it difficult to pay back their debts in the early stages of their working careers. They may be trying to find jobs in a sluggish economy or they may pay personal debts they borrowed to achieve their educational targets. They may pay late, but they should pay it, anyway.
I do not understand those who run away from repaying their scholarships and leave their guarantors in big trouble. All scholars know very well when they sign up for such loans about the conditions in which they must pay back, by working at a designated academic institute for a certain period of time and utilising the knowledge they have learnt upon finishing their education.
A former scholar, who works at a state organisation according to her grant's agreement, explained in a local webboard about the nightmare of having to repay her loan -- from culture shock to bad living conditions in a remote area, etc. From her point of view, working to repay the loan was one of the worst periods in her life.
I know how bureaucratic and full of red-tape state organisations could be, how scholars might feel about old-fashioned organisational cultures and how disorganised a state organisation can be. But these organisations, after all, were the source of their loans.
The loans are from tax money. And the educational institutions, as well as all tax payers, expect grant recipients from overseas to improve the country, upgrade the organisations' efficiencies and for their precious experiences to be shared with their colleagues who never received such a good chance.
For those who flee paying back their loans, we cannot expect them to realise their obligations and the loans management body should do their part in reclaiming the expenses. But to fix this problem in the long run, something should be done to shape up a good mindset among new scholars.
This means during the recruitment process for loan recipients, the moral aspect should not be overlooked anymore. On the contrary, it should be considered one of the selection criteria too.
If nothing is done to curb this problem, this sort of situation will happen over and over. And every time it will be just another piece of news that comes and goes.
Peerawat Jariyasombat is a travel writer of the Life section of the Bangkok Post.