Recently here in Thailand suicide rates have jumped in students, newspapers are reporting more frequently on students taking their lives prematurely. This is a dilemma many nations are experiencing, especially China and India.

There have been dreadful reports of young kids ending their lives because they were being taken out of school to help run the family business, their parents couldn’t afford the education fees, falling grades, stress and on and on.

One heartbreaking story is: A girl in a town called Sing Buri on May the 17th decided to end her life, she was just 18 years old. She hung herself at her family’s house. The girl was a prospective student at Silpakorn University.

She was supposed to report to the university that day, but decided not to go, simply because her family was poor and could not afford to pay the tuition fees. This is just so unfortunate, education is important but you can still do a lot without it. There are many successful people out there who didn’t finish or go to university. It isn’t the be all and end all.

Another 21 year old student, just last week jumped off a building at her university as her grades had dropped from 3.87 to 3.14. This meant she wouldn’t receive first class honors.

The depressing part is, that these ‘poor’ students, mainly from rural Northeast Thailand don’t have money, they study hard in the most primitive of schools, then they sit entrance exams for universities already knowing that if they are accepted there is a 99% chance they won’t be able to attend as they couldn’t afford the tuition fees. So when they actually receive the acceptance letter from the university it must be a huge letdown.

As a universality spokesman said “We had thought students who killed themselves were those who got stressed out after failing to enter universities,” While the government allocates resources, including medical consultants, to help this group of students, it has nearly ignored the other group - the successful, but poor students. “We don’t have enough measures to deal with the latter group. They are admitted to universities, but they don’t know how they can find the money to pay the fees,” he said.

The government has set up the Student Loan Fund (SLF) to help them. But the fund, which provides loans to 840,000 students, has not been made known to all poor students. Education officials admit the government has failed to publicise this financial assistance package. At this time there is a massive outstanding debt owed to the government and they just recently threatened legal action against former students who should be paying back their loans now.

One 18 year old student said “I once nearly committed suicide; too, I really didn’t know who I could ask for help. Our parents are poor and I didn’t know how to solve the problem,” he said. He had passed exams to get into the Thai-Nichi Institute of Technology. But his joy quickly turned sour when the university told him he needed to pay nearly 40,000 baht for course registration fees, uniforms and, he said, the “confirmation of his place”
Thailand’s prestigious universality’s Vice-rector Tanit Tongthong said that was not the case at Chulalongkorn University. He said the university had a clear policy that all poor students will not be blocked from studying. Chulalongkorn sets aside 100 million baht to help students with financial problems each year.

It is so depressing that young kids with all their lives ahead of them are committing suicide over something that is so inconsequential, well to me anyway. Sure a good education opens doors, but also hard work and will power can be better than any diploma or degree.

What can governments do to try and slow the rate of student suicides? I don’t really know. Maybe more support programmes, online and phone in services but to what degree these already exist, I am not sure.

The government could offer more scholarships and so could universities, they could offer subsidised fees for underprivileged students. There could be a scheme for them to pay the money back over a period of 30 years, after they have found employment. These are just a few ideas I am bouncing around.

All I hope is that the trend subsides, students realise that life is much more precious than a degree, certificate or diploma. The feeling of utter despair and hopelessness will fade with time.