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.
Taiwan is stepping up plans to create self-sufficient supply chains for combat drones and increase foreign orders from the US to counter China’s numerical superiority, a defense official said on Saturday. Commenting on condition of anonymity, the official said the nation’s armed forces are in agreement with US Admiral Samuel Paparo’s assessment that Taiwan’s military must be prepared to turn the nation’s waters into a “hellscape” for the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA). Paparo, the commander of the US Indo-Pacific Command, reiterated the concept during a Congressional hearing in Washington on Wednesday. He first coined the term in a security conference last
Prosecutors today declined to say who was questioned regarding alleged forgery on petitions to recall Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) legislators, after Chinese-language media earlier reported that members of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Youth League were brought in for questioning. The Ministry of Justice Investigation Bureau confirmed that two people had been questioned, but did not disclose any further information about the ongoing investigation. KMT Youth League members Lee Hsiao-liang (李孝亮) and Liu Szu-yin (劉思吟) — who are leading the effort to recall DPP caucus chief executive Rosalia Wu (吳思瑤) and Legislator Wu Pei-yi (吳沛憶) — both posted on Facebook saying: “I
Sung Chien-liang (宋建樑), who led efforts to recall Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Lee Kun-cheng (李坤城), was released on bail of NT$80,000 today amid outcry over his decision to wear a Nazi armband to questioning the night before. Sung arrived at the New Taipei District Prosecutors’ Office for questioning in a recall petition forgery case last night wearing a red armband bearing a swastika, carrying a copy of Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf and giving a Nazi salute. Sung left the building at 1:15am without the armband and covering the book with his coat. Lee said today that this is a serious
A mountain blaze that broke out yesterday morning in Yangmingshan National Park was put out after five hours, following multi agency efforts involving dozens of fire trucks and helicopter water drops. The fire might have been sparked by an air quality sensor operated by the National Center for High-Performance Computing, one of the national-level laboratories under the National Applied Research Laboratories, Yangmingshan National Park Headquarters said. The Taipei City Fire Department said the fire, which broke out at about 11am yesterday near the mountainous Xiaoyoukeng (小油坑) Recreation Area was extinguished at 4:32pm. It had initially dispatched 72 personnel in four command vehicles, 16
RSS