Universities & higher education on Koh Tao.

Ko Tao Sub-district Learning Encouragement Centre · ศกร.ตำบลเกาะเต่า

Sub-district learning centre on the island · Tambon Ko Tao, on the island

Answers to: Department of Learning Encouragement, Ministry of Education -- the agency renamed from กศน. to สกร. under the Learning Encouragement Act B.E. 2566
Getting there from Mae Haad: On the island. No crossing.

What is actually awarded

• Basic-education completion by non-formal study -- primary, lower secondary and upper secondary (Mathayom 6 equivalency).
• Free short vocational courses run by the district office.
• No degree and no diploma is awarded here.

What matters about it

• This is the only public education body of any kind seated on Koh Tao beyond the government school itself, and it is the reason 'education on Koh Tao stops at the primary school' is the wrong summary.
• It is one of three sub-district centres under the Ko Phangan district office, alongside ศกร.ตำบลเกาะพะงัน and ศกร.ตำบลบ้านใต้, plus the district public library on Koh Phangan.
• Its own site identifier in the Surat Thani สกร. series is 1284050003 -- the third sub-district unit of district 1284050000. That numbering is itself the proof that Koh Tao is a sub-district of Ko Pha-ngan and not a district of its own.
• The district also runs an online learning platform for its students at phangan.suratlearning.com, with separate entry points for the primary and secondary levels.

Source: The Ko Phangan district office's own site under surat.nfe.go.th, read 2026-09-08, which lists all three sub-district centres by name and links each to its own site. We could NOT load the Koh Tao centre's own page, so we publish no opening hours, staffing or enrolment figure for it, and no telephone of its own -- that is our gap, and the district office is the number to call. https://sites.google.com/surat.nfe.go.th/1284050000/

Ko Phangan District Office of Learning Encouragement · ศูนย์ส่งเสริมการเรียนรู้ระดับอำเภอเกาะพะงัน (เดิม กศน.อำเภอเกาะพะงัน)

District learning-encouragement office on another island · Thong Sala, Koh Phangan -- on the Thong Sala--Chaloklum road

Answers to: Department of Learning Encouragement, Ministry of Education
Address: 2/31 Moo 2, Thong Sala--Chaloklum Road, Tambon Ko Phangan, Amphoe Ko Phangan, Surat Thani 84280
Telephone: 077-332520 (telephone and fax)
Getting there from Mae Haad: A sea crossing. Mae Haad to Thong Sala is roughly 1 to 1.5 hours by speedboat, and sailings are cancelled in heavy weather. Day-return is normal in calm season and not dependable in the monsoon.

What is actually awarded

• Enrolment, assessment and certification for the non-formal basic-education routes delivered through the Koh Tao sub-district centre.
• No degree and no diploma is awarded here.

What matters about it

• Koh Tao's district education office is on another island. That is the single most under-stated administrative fact about living here: Tambon Ko Tao belongs to Amphoe Ko Pha-ngan, so anything that must be done at district level -- enrolment paperwork, examinations administered centrally, records -- may mean a boat.
• BAANLYY published two different addresses and two different telephone numbers for this one office across two city guides. The office's own website settles it, and the version we are correcting was the newer one.
• The office's site is live and posting into late B.E. 2568, so this is a working service and not a dormant page.
• We publish no staff names for it. Its own homepage names a director while a September 2568 bulletin on the same site names an acting director; we are not going to pick between two statements a body makes about itself, and a name is not what a reader needs.

Source: The office's own site under surat.nfe.go.th, read 2026-09-08. Address and telephone are transcribed from its published contact line. The number is not of the round 0XX-XXX-000 form that an unfinished template page produces. https://sites.google.com/surat.nfe.go.th/1284050000/

Ramkhamhaeng University -- regional-student route, Surat Thani examination centre · มหาวิทยาลัยรามคำแหง (นักศึกษาส่วนภูมิภาค) ศูนย์สอบจังหวัดสุราษฎร์ธานี

Open university followable without moving · Study from home on Koh Tao; examinations at the university's Surat Thani provincial examination centre

Answers to: Ramkhamhaeng University, a state open university
Getting there from Mae Haad: Nothing routine. The teaching is at home; the travel is at examination time, and from Koh Tao that means a ferry plus a road leg to Mueang Surat Thani -- realistically an overnight trip rather than a day out.
Conferred by: Ramkhamhaeng University

What is actually awarded

• Bachelor's degrees conferred by Ramkhamhaeng University itself, across its faculties.

What matters about it

• This is the route that answers the question the site never asked for Koh Tao: can a resident take a Thai bachelor's degree WITHOUT leaving the island. For most of the year, yes.
• Surat Thani is an EXAMINATION CENTRE, not one of Ramkhamhaeng's regional campuses (สาขาวิทยบริการเฉลิมพระเกียรติ). Those are a different and much smaller list, and this province is not on it. An examination centre gives you somewhere to sit papers; it is not a place to attend lectures, and any guide that calls it a campus has upgraded it.
• For a DTV or LTR holder or a long-stay resident who is working on the island, this is structurally the most useful entry on the page: it is the only Thai degree route here whose ordinary week requires no boat.

Source: Ramkhamhaeng's own regional-student pages, read first-party by BAANLYY on 2026-09-08 for the neighbouring Koh Phangan guide, where the centre's location and number are recorded. We tried to re-open Ramkhamhaeng's own register on two of its hosts during this run and both returned empty bodies, so we publish the ROUTE, which is well established, and deliberately do not restate the centre's address or telephone here as freshly verified. Confirm the current examination venue with the university before you enrol. https://www.ru.ac.th/ (institution's main site; we could not re-open the specific register this run)

Sukhothai Thammathirat Open University -- distance route, served by the Nakhon Si Thammarat centre · มหาวิทยาลัยสุโขทัยธรรมาธิราช -- ศูนย์วิทยบริการและชุมชนสัมพันธ์ มสธ. นครศรีธรรมราช

Open university followable without moving · Study from home on Koh Tao; the serving academic-service and community-relations centre is at Phra Phrom, Nakhon Si Thammarat

Answers to: Sukhothai Thammathirat Open University, a state distance-teaching university
Address: 169 Moo 3, Nakhon Si Thammarat--Ron Phibun Road, Tambon Na San, Amphoe Phra Phrom, Nakhon Si Thammarat 80000
Telephone: 0-7537-8680 to -8681
Getting there from Mae Haad: Ordinarily none. The centre is a service point, not a campus you attend; from Koh Tao it is a ferry and a long road leg, and most students never need to make it.
Conferred by: Sukhothai Thammathirat Open University

What is actually awarded

• Bachelor's, master's and doctoral degrees conferred by Sukhothai Thammathirat itself, taught at a distance.

What matters about it

• Note the unit's real name: it is an academic-service and community-relations centre (ศูนย์วิทยบริการและชุมชนสัมพันธ์), not a campus and not a faculty. It supports students in its region; the degree is the university's.
• Surat Thani sits in this centre's assigned group of provinces rather than in the group it covers on an interim basis. That distinction is not decorative: it is the difference between being someone's responsibility and being someone's overflow, and it falls the other way for the Andaman-coast provinces served by the same centre.
• Its published email address is nr.adoffice@stou.ac.th.

Source: The centre's own site at nakhon.stou.ac.th, read 2026-09-08 -- address, telephone and email are transcribed from its own contact block. The assignment of Surat Thani to this centre's responsible group was read first-party from the same site on 2026-09-08 for the Koh Phangan guide; that sub-page did not load during this run. We do not publish any count of STOU's regional centres, because the only figure we found for it came from a search-engine summary rather than from STOU. https://nakhon.stou.ac.th/

Koh Samui Interdisciplinary School, Suratthani Rajabhat University · วิทยาลัยสหวิทยาการ เกาะสมุย มหาวิทยาลัยราชภัฏสุราษฎร์ธานี

University college one ferry away · Bo Phut, Amphoe Ko Samui

Answers to: Suratthani Rajabhat University -- an internal unit with status equivalent to a faculty
Address: 36 Moo 6, Tambon Bo Phut, Amphoe Ko Samui, Surat Thani 84320
Telephone: 077 913 333 ext. 1499, or 081 737 9494
Getting there from Mae Haad: One ferry. Mae Haad to Ko Samui is roughly 1 to 1.5 hours by speedboat, or about 2.5 hours by car ferry. That is a relocation, not a commute -- nobody attends lectures on Samui from Koh Tao.
Conferred by: Suratthani Rajabhat University

What is actually awarded

• A Bachelor of Business Administration in Hotel, Accommodation and Culinary Arts Business Management, taught at Ko Samui, with two majors: hotel and accommodation business management, and culinary arts.
• Short professional and upskill courses, and a licensed tour-guide training course.

What matters about it

• This is the nearest place to Koh Tao where a bachelor's degree is actually read on site. It is not the mainland.
• Its status is recent and precise. The university council approved the establishment project under its 2566-2570 excellence plan, resolved at meeting 3/2567 on 26 March 2024 to constitute the college as an internal unit with faculty-equivalent status, and that status took effect on 17 May B.E. 2568 (2025).
• IMPORTANT NAMING SEAM, and it is the sort of thing that produces two entries where there is one body: this college grew OUT of the International School of Tourism's Ko Samui operation. The college's own history says it was the International School of Tourism at Amphoe Ko Samui that was approved to run the establishment project. Do not read the tourism school's Samui centre and this college as two independent campuses; the university also runs the International School of Tourism separately, and the safe way to describe the Samui presence is by naming the college and its programmes rather than by counting units.
• As of an announcement on its own site dated 18 August 2026, it has a new bachelor's route advertised as completable in three years. We do not republish the fee figure that announcement carries, because the announcement does not state the period it covers and a fee without a period is worse than no fee.

Source: The college's own site at kis.sru.ac.th -- homepage, contact block, institutional history and the list of programmes taught at Amphoe Ko Samui -- all read 2026-09-08. https://kis.sru.ac.th/

Credit Bank at the Koh Samui Interdisciplinary School · ระบบคลังหน่วยกิต (Credit Bank) วิทยาลัยสหวิทยาการ เกาะสมุย

Credit-accumulation route, not a degree · Ko Samui, with short courses also delivered online

Answers to: Suratthani Rajabhat University
Getting there from Mae Haad: Depends entirely on the module. The college publishes this under the heading Work & Study, and it runs some short courses online; the module sets themselves are Samui-based.
Conferred by: Suratthani Rajabhat University

What is actually awarded

• Credit for completed module sets, banked toward a degree rather than awarded as one.
• Two module sets are published: hotel and cruise-ship business management, and Thai and international culinary arts.

What matters about it

• This is the entry that fits Koh Tao's actual working population better than any degree does. The island's foreign residents are overwhelmingly dive professionals, hospitality staff and remote workers who cannot take three years off, and a credit bank is designed for exactly the person who accumulates study around a job.
• It is NOT a qualification in itself, and we have given it its own `kind` rather than filing it with the degrees for that reason. Banked credit becomes a degree only when it is transferred into one.
• On 4 September 2026 the college recorded a memorandum of understanding with the Institute for Skill Development 11, Surat Thani, covering education provision, skills development, credit transfer and credit accumulation -- which is the machinery that makes vocational hours count toward academic credit.
• Ask two things before assuming it works for you: which degree the banked credit transfers into, and what the time limit on banked credit is.

Source: The college's own programmes page and news items at kis.sru.ac.th, read 2026-09-08. The two module sets are published there as downloadable course outlines. https://kis.sru.ac.th/credit-bank

The mainland degree bodies of Surat Thani

Mainland degree bodies · Mueang Surat Thani and Khun Thale, on the mainland

Answers to: Various -- see the Surat Thani guide for each body's own ministry and awarding authority
Getting there from Mae Haad: A relocation. From Mae Haad it is a ferry to the mainland and then a road leg to Mueang Surat Thani. Nobody does this weekly.

What is actually awarded

• Bachelor's and postgraduate degrees across several institutions, including a Rajabhat university, a campus of a national research university, a Buddhist university college, a nursing college and a technical college whose bachelor's degrees are conferred by its parent institute.

What matters about it

• We deliberately do not re-list the mainland institutions here. BAANLYY keeps a Surat Thani registry that carries each body with its own awarding authority and its own first-party source, and duplicating the names into a second file is how two pages start disagreeing.
• The honest framing for a Koh Tao reader is that the mainland is the deepest option and the least compatible with staying. If staying is the point, the two open-university routes above are the ones to read first.

Source: BAANLYY's Surat Thani higher-education registry, rewritten from first-party sources on 2026-09-02. Follow the Surat Thani guide for the per-institution detail.

No university, university campus, college or degree-awarding body of any kind is seated on Koh Tao. · our finding, not a register entry

We state this as our finding rather than as a proven negative, and the distinction matters. We checked the bodies that would plausibly hold a site here -- the district learning-encouragement office's own list of its units, Suratthani Rajabhat's own list of what it teaches on the islands, and the Surat Thani provincial picture -- and none records anything on Koh Tao above school level. That is a strong reading, not a register entry, and if you know of one we would rather be corrected than be tidy.

What fills it: The two open-university routes, which need no campus at all, and the Koh Samui college one ferry away.

There is no community college in Surat Thani province. · disproved by a register

The Institute of Community Colleges' own register names the provinces that have one, and Surat Thani is not among them. We flag this specifically because a search-engine answer summary asserted, in prose, that the register 'mentions specific colleges including Surat Thani Community College'. No such institution exists. A summary that reads like a quotation from a register is not the register.

What fills it: Nothing local. The nearest community colleges are Ranong and Phang Nga, both on the Andaman side.

Surat Thani has no Ramkhamhaeng regional campus -- only an examination centre. · our finding, not a register entry

Ramkhamhaeng's regional campuses (สาขาวิทยบริการเฉลิมพระเกียรติ) are a specific, named and much shorter list than its examination centres, and we did not find Surat Thani on it. We could not open Ramkhamhaeng's own register during this run -- two of its hosts returned empty bodies -- so we publish this as our reading rather than as the university's statement, and we publish no count of either list.

What fills it: The regional-student route itself, which is studied from home and examined in the province.

No dive qualification taken on Koh Tao is a Thai academic qualification. · disproved by a register

Koh Tao is one of the world's largest producers of recreational dive certifications, and it would be very easy for a guide to let that stand in for post-school education. It does not. Instructor and divemaster certifications are issued by international recreational-diving agencies, not by a Thai ministry, they carry no Thai academic credit, and they are not a school-leaving or degree qualification. They are excellent professional credentials and they are not what this page is about. If you want dive hours to count toward academic credit, the credit-bank entry above is where that conversation starts.

What fills it: Nothing, and that is the point: it is a different kind of credential, valuable in its own industry.

Is there a university on Koh Tao?

No. No university, university campus, college or degree-awarding body of any kind is seated on this island, and we do not expect one. We publish that as our finding rather than as a proven negative — we checked the district learning office's own list of its units and Suratthani Rajabhat's own list of what it teaches on the islands, and neither records anything on Koh Tao above school level.

Can I take a Thai bachelor's degree while living on Koh Tao?

Yes, by either of two open-university routes. Ramkhamhaeng University's regional-student route is studied at home and examined in Surat Thani province; Sukhothai Thammathirat teaches at a distance, with the region served by its Nakhon Si Thammarat centre. Neither needs a campus, which is exactly why neither is visible to anyone searching for a university on a map of the island.

Where is the nearest place a degree is actually taught in person?

Koh Samui, not the mainland. Suratthani Rajabhat University's Koh Samui Interdisciplinary School at Bo Phut teaches a Bachelor of Business Administration on the island, with majors in hotel and accommodation business management and in culinary arts. It became an internal unit with faculty-equivalent status by council resolution 3/2567 of 26 March 2024, effective 17 May B.E. 2568. From Mae Haad that is roughly one to one and a half hours by speedboat — a relocation, not a commute.

Do my dive instructor qualifications count as education here?

Not in the Thai academic sense, and it is worth being blunt about it because Koh Tao produces recreational dive certifications at enormous scale. Instructor and divemaster certifications are issued by international recreational-diving agencies, not by a Thai ministry. They carry no Thai academic credit and they are not a school-leaving or degree qualification. They are strong professional credentials in their own industry. If you want structured study that stacks toward a degree around a working schedule, the credit bank at the Samui college is where that conversation starts.

Where do I go for adult or non-formal education on the island?

The Ko Tao Sub-district Learning Encouragement Centre (ศกร.ตำบลเกาะเต่า) is on the island and delivers basic-education completion up to Mathayom 6 equivalency by non-formal study, plus free short vocational courses. It is one of three sub-district centres under the Ko Phangan district office, which is on Koh Phangan. We could not load the Koh Tao centre's own page, so we publish no hours or telephone of its own — call the district office.

Why is Koh Tao's education office on another island?

Because Koh Tao is not a district. It is Tambon Ko Tao, one of three sub-districts of Amphoe Ko Pha-ngan in Surat Thani province. Anything that has to happen at district level happens in Thong Sala, roughly an hour to an hour and a half away by speedboat, and sailings stop in heavy weather. It is the single most under-stated administrative fact about living here.