The number of senior high-school students fell from 350,000 in 2012 to 290,000 in 2021, while the number of vocational high-school students fell from 460,000 to 260,000, Ministry of Education data showed.
The percentage of high-school students attending vocational high schools fell from 56.99 percent to 47.3 percent, so that they were outnumbered by high-school students.
Apart from the falling birthrate, the other main reason for this trend is the policy of upgrading technical and vocational institutes to universities, which has blurred the line between vocational and general education. Good junior colleges have been upgraded to institutes of technology, while reputable institutes of technology have been upgraded to universities of science and technology, and some universities of science and technology have been turned into ordinary universities.
As the sector becomes an alternative pathway to higher education, the vocational high-school and junior college graduates who previously replenished Taiwan’s basic technical workforce now mostly enroll in university, causing a shortage of skilled workers. Does Taiwan face a future with no plumbers, electricians or bus drivers?
Alliance Cultural Foundation International chairman Stanley Yen (嚴長壽) said that the structure of Taiwan’s education system has become imbalanced. A normal workforce structure should be a pyramid, with basic and middle-grade technical workers making up the majority.
However, Taiwan’s education sector has created a top-heavy inverted pyramid by supplying fewer basic and middle-grade technical workers, but plenty of upper-management talent. Meanwhile, main demand is still for basic-level workers.
The idea that book learning is superior to everything else is too deeply rooted to change overnight. Some universities should adopt a technical and vocational orientation. Industrial, agricultural and commercial colleges should be revived with up-to-date curriculums. As well as serving the needs of business and industry, and preventing a cut-off in technical talent, this could also leave more funding for higher education.
Dino Wei is an information engineer.
Translated by Julian Clegg
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus whip Fu Kun-chi (傅?萁) has caused havoc with his attempts to overturn the democratic and constitutional order in the legislature. If we look at this devolution from the context of a transition to democracy from authoritarianism in a culturally Chinese sense — that of zhonghua (中華) — then we are playing witness to a servile spirit from a millennia-old form of totalitarianism that is intent on damaging the nation’s hard-won democracy. This servile spirit is ingrained in Chinese culture. About a century ago, Chinese satirist and author Lu Xun (魯迅) saw through the servile nature of
In their New York Times bestseller How Democracies Die, Harvard political scientists Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt said that democracies today “may die at the hands not of generals but of elected leaders. Many government efforts to subvert democracy are ‘legal,’ in the sense that they are approved by the legislature or accepted by the courts. They may even be portrayed as efforts to improve democracy — making the judiciary more efficient, combating corruption, or cleaning up the electoral process.” Moreover, the two authors observe that those who denounce such legal threats to democracy are often “dismissed as exaggerating or
Monday was the 37th anniversary of former president Chiang Ching-kuo’s (蔣經國) death. Chiang — a son of former president Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石), who had implemented party-state rule and martial law in Taiwan — has a complicated legacy. Whether one looks at his time in power in a positive or negative light depends very much on who they are, and what their relationship with the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) is. Although toward the end of his life Chiang Ching-kuo lifted martial law and steered Taiwan onto the path of democratization, these changes were forced upon him by internal and external pressures,
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus in the Legislative Yuan has made an internal decision to freeze NT$1.8 billion (US$54.7 million) of the indigenous submarine project’s NT$2 billion budget. This means that up to 90 percent of the budget cannot be utilized. It would only be accessible if the legislature agrees to lift the freeze sometime in the future. However, for Taiwan to construct its own submarines, it must rely on foreign support for several key pieces of equipment and technology. These foreign supporters would also be forced to endure significant pressure, infiltration and influence from Beijing. In other words,
RSS