The government should guarantee that a university or college would not close down midway through its students’ studies, the Taiwan Higher Education Union said yesterday.
A total of 951,35 people signed up for the joint entrance exams for four-year technical colleges and two-year junior colleges this year, the union said, citing statistics from the Testing Center for Technological and Vocational Education.
That was 15,555 people, or about 14 percent, fewer than the number of people who signed up for the tests last year, it said.
The number of people who signed up for the Advanced Subjects Test (AST) also fell, it said.
Last year, 49,119 people signed up for the AST, compared with 43,753 this year, it said, citing College Entrance Examination Center figures.
Given the decline, schools could face greater challenges in recruiting students this year, and many schools and departments might see a decline in enrollment rates, union organization department director Lin Po-yi (林柏儀) said.
As a result, many students and their parents are worried that the department they selected might close down in the course of their studies, he said.
Such inquiries that the union has received from students are upsetting, because students’ selection of preferred departments should be based on their aptitude or interest, Lin said.
No student should have to worry about whether the school they attend might close down halfway through their studies, he said.
Students should not be the ones to bear responsibility for the effects of the nation’s falling birthrate, Lin said.
The government should ensure that if it allows a university to recruit students, then those students must be allowed to complete their studies and graduate from that school, he said.
The birthrate might continue to fall and universities might face an increasingly difficult situation in terms of recruitment, Lin said, adding that if the government does not make its position clear now, more problems would emerge.
The union called on the government to guarantee that if a school wants to discontinue operations, it must first stop recruiting new students.
Only when its current students graduate should the school be allowed to close down, it said, adding that the same quality of education should be maintained in the meantime.
Death row inmate Huang Lin-kai (黃麟凱), who was convicted for the double murder of his former girlfriend and her mother, is to be executed at the Taipei Detention Center tonight, the Ministry of Justice announced. Huang, who was a military conscript at the time, was convicted for the rape and murder of his ex-girlfriend, surnamed Wang (王), and the murder of her mother, after breaking into their home on Oct. 1, 2013. Prosecutors cited anger over the breakup and a dispute about money as the motives behind the double homicide. This is the first time that Minister of Justice Cheng Ming-chien (鄭銘謙) has
BITTERLY COLD: The inauguration ceremony for US president-elect Donald Trump has been moved indoors due to cold weather, with the new venue lacking capacity A delegation of cross-party lawmakers from Taiwan, led by Legislative Speaker Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜), for the inauguration of US president-elect Donald Trump, would not be able to attend the ceremony, as it is being moved indoors due to forecasts of intense cold weather in Washington tomorrow. The inauguration ceremony for Trump and US vice president-elect JD Vance is to be held inside the Capitol Rotunda, which has a capacity of about 2,000 people. A person familiar with the issue yesterday said although the outdoor inauguration ceremony has been relocated, Taiwan’s legislative delegation has decided to head off to Washington as scheduled. The delegation
TRANSPORT CONVENIENCE: The new ticket gates would accept a variety of mobile payment methods, and buses would be installed with QR code readers for ease of use New ticketing gates for the Taipei metro system are expected to begin service in October, allowing users to swipe with cellphones and select credit cards partnered with Taipei Rapid Transit Corp (TRTC), the company said on Tuesday. TRTC said its gates in use are experiencing difficulty due to their age, as they were first installed in 2007. Maintenance is increasingly expensive and challenging as the manufacturing of components is halted or becoming harder to find, the company said. Currently, the gates only accept EasyCard, iPass and electronic icash tickets, or one-time-use tickets purchased at kiosks, the company said. Since 2023, the company said it
A tourist who was struck and injured by a train in a scenic area of New Taipei City’s Pingsi District (平溪) on Monday might be fined for trespassing on the tracks, the Railway Police Bureau said yesterday. The New Taipei City Fire Department said it received a call at 4:37pm on Monday about an incident in Shifen (十分), a tourist destination on the Pingsi Railway Line. After arriving on the scene, paramedics treated a woman in her 30s for a 3cm to 5cm laceration on her head, the department said. She was taken to a hospital in Keelung, it said. Surveillance footage from a
RSS