The subsidy plan is helpful
Following Vice President William Lai’s (賴清德) proposal to subsidize students at private universities, which was initially to provide about NT$25,000 per student per year, the Executive Yuan has also broadened subsidies to make high school and vocational high schools free as well. The subsidy, which is to take effect on Feb. 1 next year, has been raised to NT$35,000 per year for each student attending a private college or university in Taiwan.
While some have called the Executive Yuan’s annual tuition subsidy plan “splurging,” and a vote-buying act for the 2024 presidential election, I do not agree. Whether it is making high school and vocational high schools free or subsidizing private university tuition, these are measures to reduce the general public’s financial burden. Even Taichung Mayor Lu Shiow-yen (盧秀燕) supports the policy.
As the sub-replacement fertility has become increasingly severe — almost reaching to the point of a national crisis — one of the major reasons that put couples off having children is the continuous rise in the cost of education. Tuition is now alarmingly expensive, especially with private schools. Now that the government has proposed to lend a hand, policymakers across the political spectrum should be in full support instead of throwing cold water on the policy.
Former Kaohsiung mayor Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜) once famously said “never forget that the world has many sufferers,” while Hon Hai Precision Industry Co founder Terry Gou (郭台銘) proposed to have full government subsidies for children aged five and younger for one of his campaign promises.
As the Executive Yuan passed the act that would provide a NT$35,000 subsidy to students enrolled in private universities and full subsidies for high school and vocational high school students, policymakers and the public should appreciate the government’s altruism — a measure with the manner of “suffer what the people suffer” as Han used to say — to help families reduce the cost of their children’s education.
I have never understood why the government has always placed more importance on public schools than private schools, providing more subsidies to the former than the latter. Why do students who go to private schools always have to pay a lot more while getting the same level of education as public school students? This has resulted in a rather paradoxical situation: Children who are born in richer families usually attend public universities, while children of less affluent families attend private universities, resulting in an ever widening gap and class differences. The Executive Yuan’s policy is now seeking to remedy this inequality to push for better social justice.
Although Lu is from the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), she knows the needs of the general public. From a maternal point of view, she fully endorses the policy as she finds it beneficial to her “children” citizens. As the Executive Yuan has come up with such a decent policy to promote people’s welfare and happiness, she is urging it to keep the policy going, to benefit tens of thousands of students to not end up as a flash in the pan.
Hu Yen
Taipei
Concerns that the US might abandon Taiwan are often overstated. While US President Donald Trump’s handling of Ukraine raised unease in Taiwan, it is crucial to recognize that Taiwan is not Ukraine. Under Trump, the US views Ukraine largely as a European problem, whereas the Indo-Pacific region remains its primary geopolitical focus. Taipei holds immense strategic value for Washington and is unlikely to be treated as a bargaining chip in US-China relations. Trump’s vision of “making America great again” would be directly undermined by any move to abandon Taiwan. Despite the rhetoric of “America First,” the Trump administration understands the necessity of
US President Donald Trump’s challenge to domestic American economic-political priorities, and abroad to the global balance of power, are not a threat to the security of Taiwan. Trump’s success can go far to contain the real threat — the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) surge to hegemony — while offering expanded defensive opportunities for Taiwan. In a stunning affirmation of the CCP policy of “forceful reunification,” an obscene euphemism for the invasion of Taiwan and the destruction of its democracy, on March 13, 2024, the People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) used Chinese social media platforms to show the first-time linkage of three new
If you had a vision of the future where China did not dominate the global car industry, you can kiss those dreams goodbye. That is because US President Donald Trump’s promised 25 percent tariff on auto imports takes an ax to the only bits of the emerging electric vehicle (EV) supply chain that are not already dominated by Beijing. The biggest losers when the levies take effect this week would be Japan and South Korea. They account for one-third of the cars imported into the US, and as much as two-thirds of those imported from outside North America. (Mexico and Canada, while
I have heard people equate the government’s stance on resisting forced unification with China or the conditional reinstatement of the military court system with the rise of the Nazis before World War II. The comparison is absurd. There is no meaningful parallel between the government and Nazi Germany, nor does such a mindset exist within the general public in Taiwan. It is important to remember that the German public bore some responsibility for the horrors of the Holocaust. Post-World War II Germany’s transitional justice efforts were rooted in a national reckoning and introspection. Many Jews were sent to concentration camps not
RSS