Recognition and preparedness of professional skills towards an asean community, case study : undergraduate student of the food service industry program.

Abstract

Thailand has become a member of the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) which aims to stimulate economic growth, social progress, sociocultural evolution and also cooperation among its members. The main goal of ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) is to transform the region into a single market and production base to become more stable and prosperous. Hence, in order to prepare ourselves to the changes in a very near future, it is essential to encourage and support students to improve their working skills and knowledge to enter the ASEAN community confidently. In order to examine on the acknowledgement and the preparation in terms of working skill for ASEAN, undergraduate students in the first year of Food Service Industry Program were chosen by using purposive sampling. Fifty-five questionnaires were collected. The result shows that most of the students at 75.47 percent are female, 52.83 percent of them are eighteen years old and 43.39 percent use internet regularly. The evaluation on students’ knowledge, capability and working experience which are considered to be beneficial for entering the ASEAN community shows that most of the students are very well prepared in both personality and potential. Moreover, the majority are also very well educated about ASEAN in terms of economic growth, social progress, sociocultural evolution. The research also analyzed on the differences on gender of the students and channel of the resources about ASEAN that may have an impact on their knowledge and potential. The result shows that there are no significant differences between each gender and channel (P ≤ 0.05).