IMHO, anyone who wants to "learn thai" to facilitate their stay here can certainly find the time the ministry of education says needs to be spent in class learning thai. BTW; that's just 4 hours a week. Now you could quite possibly study thai the rest of your life at just 4 hours a week and never make it past "2-word-tourist-thai" or "horse-peak-thai". That's just my opinion after spending the last 7 years studying thai, so your mileage may vary. Be that as it may; About 3 months ago the ministry of education did indeed tighten up the criteria for foreigners to get approval for attending a thai language school. There are now two documents which are quite involved; insofar as you must list the the last 2 years worth of entries/exits to thailand and on which visa you were on, you must show financial proof of how you're going to live here whilst attending class (as you can't work on an ED visa) and a few other things too. I have heard reports from schools where people who lived here for a couple years on back-2-back tourist visas or visa exempt stamps were being kicked back and denied the MOE letter which lets them go out of the country to get their first 90 day ED visa. This is done in a effort to weed out those spurious one room schools, where people pay and don't attend class, and to stop people from simply choosing the ED visa route because other routes are not working out for them. The ED visa used to be a "catch all" for people to stay here who were under 50, not legally working, not married to a thai or not having half-breed kids. All I can say is, more changes are a comin' in the ED visa arena, and they're sorely overdue. I'd recommend that you get in now, while you can, and if/when changes come you'd be grandfathered in under the old criteria. Just an FYI; As far as I know, there's not a private thai language school in Bangkok which can get you a 12 month extension of stay after you come in on your 90 day single entry ED visa. That's not how the rules are enforced for private language schools. You get documentation every 90 days to go to thai immigrations and extend your stay another 90 days. In fact you don't get 15 months you get just 9 months of extensions of stay because you came in on a 90 day visa, and they count that off your total "year" of study. Now "real universities" are whores from another bar, errr I mean horses of a different color, and a real uni can get you a yearly extension of stay.. Also nothing is stopping you from studying thai for 3 years worth of extensions on that first ED visa. The only thing is; every year, you go to the Ministry of Education and get "tested" to see if you're actually able to speak something which resembles thai.. I always tell people; Face it there are nearly 70 million people in this country who appear to speak, understand, read and write thai. While it is entirely plausible that one percent of the world's population is smarter than you are, it is a statistical impossibility that all 70 million of those people are thaiz. If they can do it so can you, the linch-pin isn't the method, it's the motivation..