The International Industrial Talents Education Special (INTENSE) Program to attract foreigners to study and work in Taiwan will provide scholarships and a living allowance of up to NT$440,000 per person for two years beginning in August, Minister of Education Pan Wen-chung (潘文忠) told a meeting of the legislature’s Education and Culture Committee yesterday.
Pan was giving an update on the program’s implementation, a review of universities’ efforts to recruit international students and promotion of the Taiwan Huayu Bilingual Exchanges of Selected Talent (BEST) program.
Each INTENSE Program student would be awarded a scholarship of up to NT$100,000 per year for up to two years through the National Development Council, as well as a living allowance of at least NT$10,000 per month, which would be provided by companies, but they are obliged to work in Taiwan for two years after graduation, he said.
Photo: Tu Chien-jung, Taipei Times
The program, which is to begin in August when the new academic year starts, has recruited 2,301 students, with 35 schools participating, he said.
There will be 123 classes — 102 classes in the fields of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM), 15 in semiconductors and six in finance — and the program is to be conducted in cooperation with 197 firms, he added.
Meanwhile, the International Programs of Industry-Academia Collaboration in Taiwan to recruit students from the New Southbound Policy countries has launched 50 classes in the past few years and trained more than 20,000 students, he added.
Among the program’s 4,963 graduates over the past five years, 3,803 stayed to work in Taiwan, an employment rate of 77 percent, he said.
The number of international undergraduate students has grown steadily over the years, he said.
There are now 116,038 international students enrolled in the 2023 school year, an increase of 9,971 students from the previous year and accounting for 10.6 percent of all students, he said, adding that 67,299 of them are studying for a degree.
Pan added that 71,012 of the international students are from New Southbound Policy countries, with the majority coming from Vietnam, Indonesia and Malaysia.
Asked about stateless students from Tibet by Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Chen Pei-yu (陳培瑜), Pan said that response measures are available through cross-ministerial cooperation.
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Hung Meng-kai (洪孟楷) asked about past cases of students from New Southbound Policy countries being forced to work off-campus illegally.
Pan said that was an issue when the program was just starting, but the ministry has since demanded that universities directly recruit students on their own instead of relying on intermediary agencies and that the recruitment process be conducted in their local language.
The ministry had imposed heavy penalties on a few schools for improper conduct, and some schools have shut down, he added.
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