Within one month, two major crises in Taiwan’s higher education have been revealed: the severity of student recruitment shortfalls and the declining quality of “in-service master’s programs.”
Student shortages are nothing new, but the shortfall has reached a new high this year. Only 11 universities met their recruitment targets, while 51 universities — 22 public and 29 private — missed their target by 14,000 students, despite reporting a record acceptance rate of 98.94 percent.
The University Admission Committee said that even reputable private universities have been affected by declining enrollments, with Chinese Culture University reporting a considerable shortfall: It only recruited 257 students, despite having 2,635 available spaces.
While the Ministry of Education has drawn up a number of exit plans over the years to address the issue — such as forced closures of private universities whose recruitment rates did not meet the target, or the merging of public universities — they have only addressed low-ranking universities.
The shortfall this year reveals that Taiwan’s low birthrate has left prestigious private and public universities teetering on the brink.
This phenomenon calls for the government to reallocate its resources and funding, while loosening its policies in regards to private universities, and the whole higher education system in due course.
According to the Taiwan Higher Education Union, the government’s spending on tertiary education is only 0.39 percent of GDP, significantly lower than the 1 percent average of Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development member countries.
Aside from increasing its budget, the Ministry of Education should provide more resources for private universities, as most students attend them. By providing grants to disadvantaged or low-income students, and incentives for universities to elevate research and teaching quality, the government could ensure the quality of private education does not fall.
The deteriorating quality of “in-service master’s programs” is a correlated issue. While the purpose of the program was to provide people already in employment with an opportunity for further education and growth, the system has become an arena for students, especially politicians, to exchange interests and connections at the university.
Students in the program are usually experts or elites in a certain field, so professors often hope to build connections with them to facilitate upcoming projects or work in the future.
As the programs usually charge exorbitant tuition fees, they have become the golden goose and a source of income to make up for universities’ deficits in undergraduate programs.
As students in the program usually have jobs during weekdays, professors also overlook low attendance rates and turn a blind eye to the poor quality of theses, as can be seen from the recent “thesis gate” scandals — from former Hsinchu mayor Lin Chih-chien (林智堅) to Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Nantou County commissioner candidate Hsu Shu-hua (許淑華).
To address the problem, the ministry should more rigorously regulate the requirements for acquiring master’s degrees, review graduate schools’ enrollment thresholds and the content of their courses for in-service programs.
Higher standards should be established: The number of students a thesis adviser can take should be limited, committee members should be invited to oral defenses, and measures should be taken to ensure the originality and quality of master’s theses.
Higher education is the most critical component to a nation’s development. Rather than leaving universities to sink or swim, it is high time for the government to address these two crises by increasing its budget and reallocating its resources.
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