Changes

<p style="text-align: justify;">&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;As discussed in an overview section, NIDA was originally established to support national development in Thailand. Thai leaders in the past established NIDA based on strong belief that nation can be improved sustainably only when quality of education provided to people is enhanced, and this high-quality education is accessible to all Thai people. The key is that people themselves must be change agents, not government. This philosophy has underpinned NIDA’s development since its first establishment. </p><p style="text-align: justify;">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; In the world of fast-changing economy, NIDA is among top universities in Thailand that proactively encourage innovative ideas and embed entrepreneurial ways of thinking in students through either formal educational programs and extra learning experience outside the classroom. At NIDA Business School, think-out-of-box and entrepreneurial mindsets are promoted and are attached to activities in most of the classes taught. Learning by doing is a core principle of NIDA’s educational provision. Thus, students are given opportunities to apply what they learn in the classes to real-world problems. It is necessary to ensure that students actually have ability to apply knowledge obtained from the classes to the ways they solve the real problems out there. To support notions of innovation and entrepreneurship, crazy solutions proposed by students in their works are always welcome and encouraged by professors and their colleagues. A good example of NIDA’s promotion of innovative ideas and entrepreneurship is a foundation of “''Black Canyon'',” which is the first Thai-owned specialty retail business that has been pioneered by Thais since 1993, and has been recognized as one of the well-known business legends in the country. An original idea of starting ''Black Canyon ''stems from a project conducted by a student during studying MBA at NIDA Business School. With close advice and some of financial assistance invested by the school’s faculty members at that time, Black Canyon was established since no any single coffee retail chain was run in Thailand, and has gradually become a dominant player in the market until today. This example is raised to exhibit a good starting point of strengthening a learning environment, in which creativity and pioneering spirit should be strongly rooted. </p><p style="text-align: justify;">Besides an MBA program that NIDA pioneered in the past, it is the first institution in Thailand that offered a doctoral program in Big Data Analytics taught in the Graduate School of Applied Statistics. In additional to cutting-edge graduate programs provided, NIDA encourages students to take examinations of internally-accepted professional certificates, which are highly recognized in many industries. As a result, it has a policy that if any NIDA students can pass such tests and manage to receive those certifications, they can redeem all of examination fees from the school. More than that, in a project feasibility class in Business School, there is a business plan contest which is a stage that encourages MBA students to work collaboratively as a team in thinking creatively to come up with creative business models ever and present to professors who will give feedback and suggestion. That is the class full of joy and creativity. Another activity is Teradata University Network which is a global data analytics community that NIDA has been a partner with. Each year, NIDA students are encouraged to join data mining competition where contestants will be provided with real dataset from a real organization and they have to analyze that data using data mining techniques so that they can present think-out-of-box solutions found from that dataset to that organization who owns the data. So far, it seems that teams who won this competition has always been ones with ability to present ideas of solution derived from hidden sides where very few people were thinking of.&nbsp; </p>