The people who passed senior and junior exams for civil servants this year were older and had higher academic degrees than in previous years, according to Ministry of Examination statistics.
“The phenomenon of people being overqualified in the national examination could not be avoided,” chief secretary of the ministry Lin Kuang-chi (林光基) said.
The better educated and slightly older talent pool was the result of private company employees trying to get stable jobs in the government as a result of worries about future prospects, Lin said.
He pointed to records showing that many science and engineering graduates from prestigious universities have left private enterprises for the public sector. Minister of Examinations Tung Pao-cheng (董保城) said the trend would raise the caliber of government employees.
“It is a good thing to have older people, because they have more social experience and will have more empathy when serving as civil servants,” Tung said.
According to the ministry’s statistics, those who passed the senior exams taken in July averaged 29.63 years of age, up 0.67 years from the previous year. Among them, the oldest was a 60-year-old woman, while the youngest was 21 years old. Thirteen of those who passed the exam were over 51 years old, four times as many as last year.
The same trend was seen in the junior exams, with those who passed the test averaging 29.35 years of age, 0.44 years more than last year’s average. The oldest successful test taker was 57 years old and the youngest 20. There were 11 people over the age of 51 who passed the test, up from five last year.
Senior exam candidates are required to have at least a bachelor’s degree, but this year, over 40 percent had master’s or even doctoral degrees. The junior exam requires applicants to have only a high-school education, but over 95 percent of the test takers this year had bachelor’s degrees or above, and seven had PhDs.
WANG RELEASED: A police investigation showed that an organized crime group allegedly taught their clients how to pretend to be sick during medical exams Actor Darren Wang (王大陸) and 11 others were released on bail yesterday, after being questioned for allegedly dodging compulsory military service or forging documents to help others avoid serving. Wang, 33, was catapulted into stardom for his role in the coming-of-age film Our Times (我的少女時代). Lately, he has been focusing on developing his entertainment career in China. The New Taipei District Prosecutors’ Office last month began investigating an organized crime group that is allegedly helping men dodge compulsory military service using falsified documents. Police in New Taipei City Yonghe Precinct at the end of last month arrested the main suspect,
A cat named Mikan (蜜柑) has brought in revenue of more than NT$10 million (US$305,390) for the Kaohsiung MRT last year. Mikan, born on April 4, 2020, was a stray cat before being adopted by personnel of Kaohsiung MRT’s Ciaotou Sugar Refinery Station. Mikan was named after a Japanese term for mandarin orange due to his color and because he looks like an orange when curled up. He was named “station master” of Ciaotou Sugar Refinery Station in September 2020, and has since become famous. With Kaohsiung MRT’s branding, along with the release of a set of cultural and creative products, station master Mikan
LITTORAL REGIMENTS: The US Marine Corps is transitioning to an ‘island hopping’ strategy to counterattack Beijing’s area denial strategy The US Marine Corps (USMC) has introduced new anti-drone systems to bolster air defense in the Pacific island chain amid growing Chinese military influence in the region, The Telegraph reported on Sunday. The new Marine Air Defense Integrated System (MADIS) Mk 1 is being developed to counter “the growing menace of unmanned aerial systems,” it cited the Marine Corps as saying. China has constructed a powerful defense mechanism in the Pacific Ocean west of the first island chain by deploying weapons such as rockets, submarines and anti-ship missiles — which is part of its anti-access/area denial (A2/AD) strategy against adversaries — the
Eleven people, including actor Darren Wang (王大陸), were taken into custody today for questioning regarding the evasion of compulsory military service and document forgery, the New Taipei District Prosecutors’ Office said. Eight of the people, including Wang, are suspected of evading military service, while three are suspected of forging medical documents to assist them, the report said. They are all being questioned by police and would later be transferred to the prosecutors’ office for further investigation. Three men surnamed Lee (李), Chang (張) and Lin (林) are suspected of improperly assisting conscripts in changing their military classification from “stand-by
RSS