Update: As of 25th of April, The round 3 fees has now been waived. See CUPT's announcement.
Around August 2021, I wrote a blog post on my old blog about Dr.Gong's speech concerning the third round of TCAS admission fees, which cost students up to 900 baht (around 30 USD at that time). That doesn't sound a lot, but considering that a lot of Thais still live in poverty and there are a lot more fees than this, it just puts more weight and burden on students.
Today, CUPT announced Dr.Gong's passing on their Facebook page. While this blog post's intention isn't to disrespect him, there's an irony that needs to be present.
On March 19th, Dek-d, a Thai educational news website, reported that CUPT might go back on their decision about waiving the third round of TCAS admission fees for this year. According to them, students would have to pay the reserve payment first, and if the funding from MHESI has been approved, then they would pay all the students back.
This, as I said earlier, adds more burden to the already high fees for higher education. It doesn't sound like a lot, but it's the least they could do to help ease the burden. It's kind of sad as there are a lot of cases where students don't get to study at their desired university (or any at all) because of their financial situation (one of the recent case).
Anyway, condolences to Dr.Gong's family. And I hope one day, Thailand's education system will give more people the opportunity they deserve.
Reference/Links
https://web.archive.org/web/20210824175053/blog.guntxjakka.me/posts/900-baht-isnt-that-expensive/