Schools & universities in Nakhon Sawan.

The city's main university, at 398 Moo 9 Sawanwithi Road in Tambon Nakhon Sawan Tok on the western side of the city — 108 rai and 17 teaching buildings, by the university's own estate register. It traces its founding to 1922 as an agricultural teacher-training school and took its present name under the Rajabhat University Act of 2004. Its own faculty directory now lists six faculties, not the five this page carried until September 2026: education; agricultural and industrial technology; humanities and social sciences; management science; science and technology; and nursing. It also runs a demonstration (satit) school and a health-service unit named for Luang Pho Phat Punyakamo, focused on alternative medicine and elderly care. NSRU is the single biggest reason the western side of the city has the province's deepest rental supply and its cafe culture.

Renting near ‘the university’ is not one decision here, because NSRU is not one site. Its second campus occupies roughly 500 rai beside Phahonyothin Road at Tambon Yan Matri, 14 km from the in-town campus by the university's own estate register, and it is where political science, law, music, agricultural technology, food technology and Thai classical dance are actually taught. Student accommodation opened there in 2013 and a six-storey teaching block, staff housing and a convention centre are under construction. One caution we will not paper over: the tambon sits in Phayuha Khiri district, while the university's own estate page prints Mueang — confirm the district with the faculty before you sign anything near it. If your household is attached to one of those subjects, the west-side rental belt is on the wrong end of a 14 km commute.

Mahidol's third regional campus beyond its Bangkok–Salaya core, alongside Kanchanaburi and Amnat Charoen — and, for anyone house-hunting, the thing to know is that it is not in Nakhon Sawan city. The campus is at 402/1 Moo 5, Tambon Khao Thong, in Phayuha Khiri district, a separate district south of Mueang Nakhon Sawan where the rental market is. Its degree list is also wider than health sciences: the campus's own academic office lists a Bachelor of Public Health in community health, a four-year Bachelor of Nursing Science, a B.Sc. in ‘SMART Farmer’ agriculture and a B.A. in eco-cultural entrepreneurship. Mahidol still uses the formal name ‘Nakhon Sawan Campus Establishment Project’ on those academic pages. Verify current programmes directly; a regional campus's course list changes more often than a main campus's.

The province's own private university, and the plainest reason the old ‘two universities’ line was wrong: this is not a branch of anything, it is a university headquartered here, at 13/1 Moo 6 Phahonyothin Road, Tambon Nong Krot, Mueang Nakhon Sawan. It was founded in 1998 by Charoon and Hathai Siriwiriyakul with a group of affiliated local companies, and teaches through faculties of business and management, science and technology, and humanities and social sciences, with nursing and engineering listed as establishment projects. Computer science and computer multimedia sit under the science faculty.

MCU is a public university, and Nakhon Sawan holds a full campus of it — a วิทยาเขต, the institution's own word for a campus rather than a study centre — in Tambon Nakhon Sawan Ok, Mueang district, on the eastern side of the city. It admits at bachelor's, master's and doctoral level through its faculty of education and teaches a Bachelor of Political Science among other programmes. Confirm the current programme list with the campus directly.

At 45 Atthakawi Road in Pak Nam Pho — next door to Sawanpracharak Hospital at number 43, which is the whole point of it. The college belongs to the Praboromarajchanok Institute, the Ministry of Public Health's own degree-granting institution, and runs a four-year Bachelor of Nursing Science alongside a one-year practical-nurse certificate. With NSRU's and Mahidol's nursing programmes, that is three separate nursing degrees taught inside this one province.

The least visible entry on this page and one of the most consequential. The institute that confers bachelor's degrees for six vocational colleges across Nakhon Sawan, Kamphaeng Phet, Phichit and Uthai Thani is headquartered in this city, at 155/1 Moo 1 Phahonyothin Road, Tambon Nakhon Sawan Ok. Three of those six colleges are in Nakhon Sawan: the Technical College at 400 Sawanwithi Road, the Vocational College and the Industrial and Community Education College. On the institute's own published programme list, bachelor's study is sited here in electrical technology and automotive technology at the Technical College, and in home-economics management at the Vocational College. The degree is conferred by the institute rather than the college, which is why a ‘technical college’ can carry a student to bachelor's level — a mechanism completely invisible from the name, and the reason these institutions are missing from most guides to the province.

Sukhothai Thammathirat Open University runs one of its ten regional centres here, in Tambon Wat Sai in Mueang district — a site of about 7 rai, built in 1995 and opened on 8 July 1997. This is the honest exception on the page: the centre provides tutorials, examinations, library access and student services, but STOU's degrees are conferred by the university in Nonthaburi. If you are studying with STOU while living in Nakhon Sawan this is your local point of contact. It is not a campus, and we are not going to call it one.

Medical students take their clinical years inside Sawanpracharak Hospital's Khao Khiao site at 999 Moo 7, Tambon Nakhon Sawan Ok, under the Collaborative Project to Increase Production of Rural Doctors. The partner university has changed twice, and the current one is not the one most sources still name. By the centre's own history: it opened in 1995 as an affiliated institution of Thammasat University's Faculty of Medicine, moved to Mahidol University from the 1999 academic year, and since the 2023 academic year has admitted its students with the Faculty of Medicine of the Praboromarajchanok Institute. Its own tally is 626 graduates — 40 through Thammasat, 586 through Mahidol. Intake is 32 a year, and from the 2026 academic year the home-province catchment widened from Nakhon Sawan, Kamphaeng Phet and Uthai Thani to six provinces, adding Phitsanulok, Phichit and Chai Nat.

The province's flagship government secondary school and generally described as its largest, coeducational and serving mathayom 1–6. It was founded in 1905 by the abbot of Wat Photharam with 23 students and moved to its present site in 1962. This is the school ambitious local families aim at, and the reference point for how good Thai-medium secondary education gets in the province.

The city's other major government secondary school and the historic counterpart to Nakhon Sawan School, with its own site and long-established reputation. Between the two, Thai-medium secondary provision in the city is genuinely strong — which is not true of every province of this size.

The provincial anuban (kindergarten and primary) school, and the practical answer for younger children: it runs a Mini English Program (MEP) alongside the standard Thai curriculum. MEP is not an international curriculum — it is a Thai school teaching a portion of subjects in English — but for a foreign or mixed family with primary-age children it is the most accessible English-medium route in the city.

A long-established private school beside the Chao Phraya on Ko Si Road in Pak Nam Pho, formerly Chotirawee School and now part of the international Lasallian (De La Salle Brothers) network, which gives it a genuine link to a worldwide Catholic education system. It is the main private alternative to the government schools in the city centre and the closest thing Nakhon Sawan has to an internationally-affiliated school.

We could not verify a single full international-curriculum school in Nakhon Sawan — no IB, British or American track running through to secondary, and no school in the mainstream international-school directories for this province. What exists is strong Thai-medium government schooling, an MEP primary programme, and a Lasallian private school. Families who need a full international curriculum should plan on Bangkok, about 3–4 hours south, or Phitsanulok and Chiang Mai to the north. We would rather say this plainly than pad the page with a school that isn't there. Note the asymmetry: the international-school field here is genuinely empty, while the higher-education field turned out to be three times larger than we had published. A gap on this page is not evidence of a gap on the ground, which is why we now name our sources for each institution.