Recent media reports said that three problematic universities have been ordered to halt new enrollments. This has given rise to questions of whether the government should deal with the campuses and buildings of shuttered universities.
It is estimated that for academic year 2028, more than half of private universities would not be able to recruit Taiwanese students, and if they fail to attract international students or adult learners, these universities would be ordered to shut down.
In that case, aside from turning the campuses and buildings into public housing or sports centers, the government should consider bringing together corporate resources and long-term care services, and transform the sites into “dementia villages.”
Statistics released by the Taiwan Alzheimer Disease Association showed that as of December of last year, the number of people with Alzheimer’s or other forms of dementia totaled 320,000, or 1.37 percent of the population. In other words, one out of 72 people have some form of dementia.
Data and research have shown that the risk of people having dementia increases as they age. Taiwan must be prepared for such a future, and the government must plan how to take care of people with this condition. In an aging society like Taiwan, the dementia population would definitely continue to grow.
People with dementia lose cognitive function, which could lead to other diseases and make them emotionally sensitive. This puts families who look after them under great pressure. Although Taiwan has started to set up dementia-friendly communities, many of these areas are hybrid communities in which people with dementia live alongside the able-bodied. The community might be a friendly one, but it might not be able to satisfy their needs.
To improve the situation, the government could consider the example of the Netherlands’ De Hogeweyk — the world’s first “dementia village,” which opened in 2009 — and build our own. The village could be built on the site of a shuttered university to exclusively serve people with dementia. It would resemble an ordinary residential area, but the stores and facilities there should recruit staff who know and understand how to deal with people with dementia. Social workers and health professionals should also live inside or be stationed at the village.
Meanwhile, long-term care insurance companies and corporations can and should provide support and resources for establishing such a village. In this way, people with dementia would be assisted and attended to mentally and physically in a friendly, warm and professional way. This would lessen the burden on family members while allowing people with dementia to live with dignity.
Lu Chen-wei is an associate research fellow at the Association of Strategic Foresight.
Translated by Emma Liu
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
The military is conducting its annual Han Kuang exercises in phases. The minister of national defense recently said that this year’s scenarios would simulate defending the nation against possible actions the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) might take in an invasion of Taiwan, making the threat of a speculated Chinese invasion in 2027 a heated agenda item again. That year, also referred to as the “Davidson window,” is named after then-US Indo-Pacific Command Admiral Philip Davidson, who in 2021 warned that Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) had instructed the PLA to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027. Xi in 2017