A national university is headquartered in Ayutthaya.

By awarding authority, not by campus sign

Two of these are invisible to a search for “universities in Ayutthaya”

The Rajabhat university is the one most lists find, and it deserves its place: Phranakhon Si Ayutthaya Rajabhat University traces to a teacher training school of 1905, sits at 96 Pridi Banomyong Road inside the historic island, teaches to postgraduate level through its own Graduate School, and houses the Ayutthaya Studies Institute. If you are moving here with a university-age student who wants to study in Thai, it is the obvious local option.

It is not, however, the only university here, and the two it hides are hidden by their names. Rajamangala University of Technology Suvarnabhumi was created on 18 January 2005 from four merged campuses — Ayutthaya Hantra, Ayutthaya Wasukri, Nonthaburi and Suphan Buri — and its Office of the Rector is in the Boon Mongkol building at Hantra, on the Asia Road east of the city. Its second Ayutthaya campus, the Wasukri Centre, is on U Thong Road inside the historic city. Two campuses of four, plus the rectorate, in one province: this is the university's seat. The name it carries is Suvarnabhumi, so no province-name search returns it.

Mahachulalongkornrajavidyalaya University is hidden the same way, by an association rather than a word. Founded by King Chulalongkorn in 1887 at Wat Mahathat in Bangkok, Thailand's oldest Buddhist university moved its main campus to Wang Noi District in this province in 2008. For an English-speaking resident that matters concretely: its International Buddhist Studies College, on the Wang Noi campus, teaches in English from a BA in Buddhist Studies through master's degrees in Buddhist Studies, Religion and Philosophy, and Innovative Mindfulness and Peace Studies, to doctorates in two of those fields, with one master's taught in Chinese. Ordained and lay applicants are admitted on the same terms. There are very few places outside Bangkok where a foreign resident can read for an English-medium degree without relocating, and Wang Noi is one of them.

The fourth degree awarder is private and small: the Institute of Entrepreneurial Science Ayothaya at Wat Tum, about three kilometres from the city centre, which opened in June 2007 and publishes faculties of Pharmacy, Public Health, Business Administration and Sport Science, plus a Bangkok campus on South Sathorn Road. It publishes whole-programme fees on its own admissions page; confirm them with the institute rather than with us.

The technical college and the degree route

This page used to say that Phra Nakhon Si Ayutthaya Technical College awards vocational certificates (ปวช.) and high vocational certificates (ปวส.) rather than bachelor's degrees. The first half is right and comes from the college's own programme list — twelve certificate and thirteen higher-certificate programmes, including a higher certificate in rail transport systems, which is a pointed thing to teach in a province being rebuilt around a high-speed railway. The second half was our own claim and it was misleading. The college states that it sits under the Institute of Vocational Education Central Region 1, and that institute is the body through which Thailand's public vocational colleges award the Bachelor of Technology (ทล.บ.), a continuation degree taken after the higher certificate. Whether a ทล.บ. cohort runs at this campus in a given year is a question for the college; telling a reader that the route does not exist was wrong, and we have withdrawn it.