Thailand university fees, explained

A Thai university fee is not one number. It is a number, a basis, a nationality and an academic year — drop any of the four and the figure can mislead by a factor of two. This guide explains the structures we found when we read the official fee documents of Thailand's English-taught programmes in October 2026, and how CredRadar records each one.

Four bases, and they are not interchangeable

Per semester is the dominant basis at public universities: Kasetsart, Chiang Mai, Khon Kaen, KMITL, KMUTT, Prince of Songkla and Mae Fah Luang all price this way. A Thai academic year has two regular semesters, so a per-semester rate converts to a per-year figure by multiplying by two — that is the only conversion we perform on this basis, and the row always shows the original per-semester figure too.

Whole-programme totals are the dominant private-university basis: Assumption, Bangkok University, UTCC, Dhurakij Pundit and Siam publish the full price of the degree. A total converts to a per-year figure only when the programme's duration is published with it (a four-year bachelor's, a one-year master's) — we divide, and we show the division. Where the duration is not stated, we publish the total and no per-year figure.

Per credit appears at AIT (฿16,000 per credit plus a ฿20,000 per-semester registration fee), in SIIT's graduate pricing (฿3,600 per credit plus a support fee) and at KMUTT's School of Architecture and Design (฿3,000 per credit plus an ancillary fee). A per-credit price cannot be turned into a yearly cost without the programme's credit load, so we publish the rate, the credit total where the university states it, and the university's own programme total where it publishes one.

Per year is rare (Sripatum's non-Thai sheet is one example), and a fifth pattern — an amount payable at acceptance — appears in Silpakorn University International College's intake announcements, where the announcement does not state an explicit per-semester basis. We label those figures exactly as published and do not relabel them as semester rates.

Dual pricing: the same programme, two prices

In our October 2026 sample of 139 programme entries, 46 carried an explicit Thai rate and a foreign rate. The premium is material: Chiang Mai's international Economics programme charges ฿40,000 per semester to Thai students and ฿60,000 to other nationalities (+50%); UTCC's Bachelor of Accountancy totals ฿499,150 for Thai students and ฿652,150 for foreign students (+31%); Assumption's Smart MBA is ฿370,000 against ฿500,000 (+35%). Prince of Songkla University's graduate database states the policy plainly: international students pay double the Thai rate for most programmes.

Other universities publish a single rate for everyone — Mae Fah Luang's international fee list, AIT, SIIT's flat cohort rate, and KMITL's and KMUTT's announcements. A third pattern is a foreign-rate table only: Assumption's bachelor totals and Bangkok University's international table are published for foreign students, with the Thai table published separately (or, at Sripatum, not on the same sheet). Every CredRadar row says which pattern applies. Any listing anywhere that shows one figure without saying whose rate it is should be treated as unlabelled, not as the price you will pay.

Surcharges sit on top of tuition

Some universities add an international-student charge on top of the tuition figure itself. Stamford adds ฿7,000 per term for international students; Kasetsart's international college states an international student fee of ฿10,000 per semester on top of programme tuition; KMITL adds a supplemental fee (฿15,000 per semester) to its biomedical and mechatronics group; MUIC's graduate pricing adds a per-trimester service fee, and the small difference between its Thai and international MBA totals is international health insurance. We record surcharges as separate line items, never folded silently into tuition.

Every figure belongs to an academic year

Thai universities re-price annually, and the differences are real: Bangkok University's AY2026 and AY2027 international tables already differ (the Marketing total moved from ฿541,150 to ฿547,150). A fee without a year is a fee you cannot rely on. Each CredRadar figure carries the academic year of the document it came from, the date we checked it, and a link to an archived copy of that document — so if a university later changes its page, the figure we printed can still be traced to what the university published.

What the headline figure usually excludes

• Application and admission fees — Khon Kaen's international college charges a one-off ฿10,000 admission fee; Prince of Songkla's Phuket computing programme adds a ฿15,000 entrance fee.
• Summer semesters — Chulalongkorn's EBA charges a separate summer session (฿47,250) on top of the regular-semester rate.
• Partner-side fees — in joint and dual-award programmes (a Chulalongkorn–Queensland degree, a Siam–La Trobe dual degree), the years spent at the partner are charged at the partner's own international rate, in the partner's currency. The Thailand-side figure is only part of the degree's cost.
• Living costs, insurance and visa costs — never in a tuition figure, occasionally bundled into a programme total; the basis text on each row says what the university includes.

The band, honestly stated

For a foreign student, published bachelor's fees in our sample run from Mae Fah Luang's ฿65,000 per year to about ฿320,000 per year at the top of the mainstream (MUIC's non-resident totals, KMITL's joint AI programme), with the mainstream cluster between ฿120,000 and ฿230,000 per year. Master's programme totals run from ฿250,000 to Sasin's ฿1,600,000 MBA (฿2,200,000 for its Executive MBA). Two Assumption programmes sit outside the band for an obvious reason — its aeronautic engineering degrees include commercial flight training (฿3,451,250 for the whole programme). We publish the outliers with their reason, not hidden inside an average.