Schools & universities in Maha Sarakham.

The institution the province is built around. It began in 1963 as Mahasarakham Teacher's Training College, became Mahasarakham College of Education on 27 March 1968, spent two decades from 1974 as a regional campus of Srinakharinwirot University, and gained independent statutory status in 1994 as Thailand's twenty-second public university. It runs on two sites. The original downtown campus in the provincial town covers about 368 rai and keeps Education, Medicine, Veterinary Medicine and Animal Science, Environment and Resource Studies, Tourism and Hotel Management, Cultural Sciences and the Institute of Northeastern Arts and Culture. The New Campus at Khamriang in Tha Khon Yang, Kantharawichai district — established in 1988 on about 1,300 rai, roughly seven kilometres north — is now the administrative headquarters and carries most faculties, two colleges (Music, and Politics and Governance) and nine research centres. It is the only Thai university offering postgraduate palaeontology and a bachelor's degree in the Khmer language. On enrolment we publish the university's own figure of around 41,000 students and flag its age: it dates from 2017, and we could not find a more recent official number. Note also that the source itself is internally inconsistent on faculty count, giving 17 in one place and 18 in another.

Worth separating out, because it is the piece with the widest effect. Mahasarakham University's council created the Faculty of Medicine on 21 November 2003. A medical service centre opened at the Khamriang campus on 1 July 2004 and moved downtown in November 2005; the Medical Council of Thailand approved the MD programme in 2006 and the first cohort was admitted that year. Suddhavej Hospital, named by HRH Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn on 16 November 2013, opened on 6 June 2014 as the faculty's teaching hospital on Nakhon Sawan Road in tambon Talat. The faculty runs five programmes: MD, applied Thai traditional medicine, emergency healthcare, and master's and doctoral degrees in health science. Its clinical teaching network extends beyond the province — Maha Sarakham Hospital hosts a clinical medical education centre for it, and so does Roi Et Hospital about forty kilometres east, which is why that province's tertiary axis points this way.

The province's second university and the older lineage of the two: it traces back to a teacher-training school founded in 1925, became a Rajabhat Institute in 1992 under the national reform of teachers' colleges, and became Rajabhat Maha Sarakham University in 2004. It runs roughly ten faculties spanning science and technology, education, management science, humanities and social sciences, agricultural technology, information technology, political science and public administration, law, engineering and graduate studies, and has a branch campus in Nong Khai. We do not publish a student count for it: the estimates we could find range from roughly 10,000 to roughly 20,000 and come from ranking aggregators that disagree with each other, with no primary institutional figure available. That gap is also why we do not publish a combined provincial student total anywhere on this hub.

Thailand National Sports University maintains a campus in Maha Sarakham. The institution nationally was upgraded to full university status in 2018 from the former Institute of Physical Education system. We could not find a student count for the Maha Sarakham campus specifically. The campus is one of the two that were flooded to around a metre in the October 2022 Chi River flood, alongside Rajabhat Maha Sarakham University — which is a useful indicator of where in the town it sits.

The province's flagship state secondary and the answer to the question most relocating families actually ask. Sarakhampittayakhom School is at 462 Nakhon Sawan Road, tambon Talat, Mueang Maha Sarakham 44000, on 043-711585 (fax 043-722400), school code 1044410580, under Secondary Educational Service Area Office 26. It began in 1906 as a boys' school in the grounds of Positaram temple and was established as a formal co-educational school on 10 July 1913; it now teaches Mathayom 1 to 6 with over 3,000 students on its own current figure, making it the largest Mathayom-level school in the province, and it publishes itself as a World-Class Standard School. Its director is Songsak Chaophrai. Crucially, it has run an English Programme since 2003 — one of the pioneering EPs established by the English Language Institute under the Office of the Basic Education Commission — and the programme has its own site, its own admissions route and its own office on 043-711585 ext. 118. The EP occupies the fourth and fifth floors of Building 6, runs two sections at each of M1 to M3 and one at each of M4 to M6, and teaches English, Mathematics, Science, Social Studies, Art, PE, Health, Home Economics and Computer with English as the medium of instruction, with Thai language, music and Buddhist studies taught in Thai. Its teaching staff are mainly foreign nationals. At upper secondary the EP splits into a Science and Maths track and an Arts and Languages track, the latter offering Chinese or Japanese. Students must already have working English to enter. The school separately runs a Gifted Program in Maths and Science taught in Thai, a Sports Program and a Multi-Lingual Program, and follows the 2008 OBEC curriculum with classes 08:00 to 16:00 Monday to Friday plus Saturday sessions. We do not publish an EP fee: the school posts its fee schedule as a document rather than as a figure we could read and verify, so confirm it directly through the school's own admissions site.

The town's second large state secondary, at 143 Phadung Withi Road, tambon Talat, Mueang Maha Sarakham 44000, on 043-711075, with a live site and a current 2026 copyright. It sits on the same road as both campuses of the nursing college and the provincial hospital, which is the practical point for a family weighing where in the town to live. We are not claiming a special-classroom or English-medium stream here: the school's own site publishes its departments, its administration and its timetables, but we did not find a published English Programme, and we would rather say that than infer one from the fact that the other flagship has one.

We previously filed this college under vocational provision, which undersold it twice over. First, it awards degrees. Its own published history records bachelor of technology programmes opening in sequence: electronics in 2013, electrical power technology and mould-and-die technology in 2014, automotive technology in 2015, and computer technology and welding technology in 2018. That history page runs to 2020, so treat the list as the college's own record rather than as a current prospectus and confirm which of the six are recruiting this year. Second, it is not merely a member of the regional vocational institute — it is where that institute sits. The office of the Institute of Vocational Education, Northeastern Region 3, covering Kalasin, Khon Kaen, Maha Sarakham and Roi Et, was established here in 2008. A student in Kalasin or Roi Et whose college route leads to a bachelor of technology is, administratively, pointed at this province. The college itself is old: founded in 1935 as a primary vocational school teaching carpentry, moulding and basketry to primary-certificate leavers on a two-year course, renamed in 1939 and again in 1944, merged into Mahasarakham Vocational College as its Campus 1 in 1976, and separated out as Mahasarakham Technical College on 1 January 1979. It occupies 31 rai 3 ngan 58 square wah at 460 Nakhon Sawan Road in tambon Talat — immediately next door to Sarakhampittayakhom School at 462 — on 082-210-2822, and its departments cover computer, electronics, electrical power, construction, maintenance and industrial technique, machine tools, basic technique, mechanical, welding, and logistics and supply chain management.

The second institution this page used to bury in a vocational card, and the second one that awards a bachelor's degree. It belongs to the Faculty of Nursing of the Praboromarajchanok Institute under the Ministry of Public Health — not the higher-education ministry — and it runs the four-year Bachelor of Nursing Science alongside a practical nursing certificate, whose eighth cohort was admitted in 2025. It is also a standing professional-development centre for the region rather than only an undergraduate school: its own announcements record a thirtieth cohort of the nurse-practitioner primary-care programme, a third cohort of the stroke-nursing programme and a thirty-fifth cohort of the primary public-health administrators course. Its director is Assistant Professor Dr Siranee Imnamkhao. The college is at 50 Phadung Withi Road, tambon Talat, on 043-711411 (fax 043-722404). It was named by King Bhumibol Adulyadej on 15 March 1983, had its foundation stone laid by the Princess Mother on 18 March 1983 and was opened by her on 23 December 1983; it was the twenty-first college under the institute, and it was built as a nursing-education project funded by grant aid from the government of Japan, covering buildings, a sports ground and teaching equipment. It runs across two sites totalling 59 rai 98 square wah: the 30-rai main campus at number 50, twenty rai of which was donated by Rian Phutthatsa and ten bought, built between 1 October 1981 and 28 February 1983; and a second campus of 29 rai 98 square wah at 10 Phadung Withi Road, granted by the provincial treasury in 1986, about two kilometres away on the road towards Kamalasai in Kalasin, holding staff and teaching accommodation and a five-storey teaching block with student dormitories.

Mahasarakham Technical College's own site lists the province's five other public vocational colleges under the provincial vocational grouping: Mahasarakham Vocational College, Mahasarakham College of Agriculture and Technology, Mahasarakham Polytechnic College, Wapi Pathum Industrial and Community Education College and Phayakkhaphum Phisai Industrial and Community Education College. We name them because the tier is a real rental-demand anchor, but we claim no addresses, enrolments or programme lists for them — we have not checked those. Below all of this the province runs the standard Thai government school system across thirteen districts; we have surveyed the town tier here, not the primary tier or the outer districts, and we state that as a scope limit rather than as an absence.

Worth stating plainly, because Ramkhamhaeng is how a very large number of working Thai adults take a degree part-time and people assume it reaches everywhere. It does not reach here. Maha Sarakham appears on neither of Ramkhamhaeng's two regional lists: not among the twenty-three Chaloem Phrakiat regional campuses, and not among the forty-one examination centres that exist precisely so that students outside those twenty-three can sit finals near home. Both lists were checked for this revision and the province is on neither. The nearest place that is on both is Khon Kaen, whose regional campus — approved on 14 January 1999 and sited in tambon Hin Tang, Ban Phai district, on Highway 23, the Ban Phai to Maha Sarakham road — doubles as examination centre 08, code RK, on 043-306106-7. That is the same town as the nearest open railway station, which is a genuinely useful coincidence if you are planning around it. Alternative centres are 11 at Triam Udom Suksa Pattanakarn Roi Et on 043-513900 and 515204, about sixty kilometres east, and 10 at Sukhanari School in Nakhon Ratchasima. Centres change between terms; check the registration handbook before you enrol rather than after.

BAANLYY could not verify an international-curriculum school anywhere in Maha Sarakham province. We re-tested that in both Thai and English for this revision and it held. Be precise about what the sentence means: we could not confirm one exists, which is not the same as confirming that none does. But do not read it as meaning the province has no English-medium schooling at all — it has had an English Programme at Sarakhampittayakhom School since 2003, which is a different and much cheaper thing than an international school, and for many families it is the option that actually decides the move. The nearest international school we can confirm is Silver Fern International School in Roi Et, about sixty kilometres east — an authorised IB World School running the Primary Years Programme with a Middle Years Programme candidacy, teaching in English alongside Thai and Chinese, drawing on Cambridge IGCSE frameworks, offering both day and boarding places, and publishing its fees: 2025/26 annual tuition ran from roughly ฿267,000 in the earliest years to roughly ฿506,000 at MYP 2, before a ฿10,000 application fee, registration and a refundable deposit, with a 10 per cent sibling discount. Sixty kilometres is a commute or a boarding decision, not a relocation — but it is in another province, and any family weighing Maha Sarakham needs that fact up front rather than buried.