Education enhances the quality of people’s life and happiness. It contributes to the welfare of society (Deveci, 2015). Student loan fund is one of the social welfares which encourage people in its country to meet the required process for completing the educational program. It aims to help the needy students that have been studying thoroughly. Governments in several countries have supported this fund for their students; these initiatives hail from nations such as New Zealand, Chile, South Africa, Ethiopia, Hungary, the UK and Thailand. (Chapman and Lounkaew, 2010)
The Thai Student Loan Fund (SLF) is to provide financial assistance for students that are from the secondary education level. The level include general and vocational education, and up to higher education. SLF is an important mechanism of the Thai government which aims to expand educational opportunities and development to its citizens so that they can fulfill the quality of education standards on an equal basis. (The Thai Student Loan Fund, 2014) The concept can be categorized into two types:
1. The Student Loan Fund (SLF): This fund is for students whose families’ income are less than 200,000 Baht per year. It is provided for students from the secondary education level (both general and vocational education) and up to the higher education level with a certain number and a limited budget.
2. Income Contingent Loan (ICL): This is a grant for vocational and higher education students in some specific disciplines where they comply with the nation’s demand and needs. The loan provides tuition fee and educational related expenses with no limitation in the number of students and budget. However, only students whose family has an income under 200,000 Baht per year are eligible for a loan to provide the funding for their living expenses. (A.)
In this loan process, the consideration of student’s qualification is very important to make the procedures become legitimate. It could screen the required students to meet the loan’s purpose. Some students are coming from a family that is poor and insufficient, such as families whose leaders that are disabled or have dies; this makes it difficult for them to get access to loans from the banking system because they have no collateral. Because of this, their child cannot prolong their study at the higher level without the government’s contribution. However, SLF is limited in number for the students and budget. Only needy students who are truly insufficient should be granted. Thus, the loan that is to be considered should be complied with the standards that are accurate and fair to screen the insufficient students, as well as to provide an equal education opportunity. Basically, executives in academics where needy students belong to must consider the students’ qualification for making a loan. The criteria for consideration should be the following: family’s income, number of family’s members, number of family’s member who are studying and officially registered, parents’ state of living, education level of the child, student’s scholarship, student’s grade, and other relevant issues. One of the methods for consideration is the students’ interview. After interviewing, the scores for each student will be made from every executive. The sum of scores will be ordered. Students having the higher score will be considered for the loans (Chiang Mai University, 2014) (Naresuan University, 2014) (University Of Phayao, 2014) (Mae Fah Luang University, 2014). Using this consideration method would reduce the gap from the personal and technical biases in a more correct manner. Therefore, the author of this research needs to develop a model for considering the student loan fund.
This research emphasizes the technique for considering needy students’ qualification for SLF by using clustering and classification technique. The clustering technique can be used to collect groups of students who belong to the same class in several dimensions. Consequently, the classification will be done for predicting graduation. The results from the evaluation based on these two techniques will encourage the executives to make wiser decisions to grant a loan that is orientated on convenience and fairness.