Higher Education Problem in Taiwan
Topic : Higher Education Problem in Taiwan (over The Last Fifty Years)
Do you think higher education is one of the important goals for humanization? Long time ago, education is the right only for the nobilities. On the contrary, Taiwan today, everyone can access to higher education as long as he or she strives hard enough. For the development of Taiwan and international competitiveness, the government had been investing a lot of money in order to advance higher education. Not surprisingly, higher education has become one of the unique phenomena in Taiwan nowadays. Many causes and effects are related to this phenomenon and discussed as follows.
There are three principal causes of this phenomenon. First of all, abundant universities have been founding and recruiting students actively. According to official statistics, higher education sectors in Taiwan have been increasing from 27 universities & colleges in 1960s, to 164 schools in 2012 (Ministry of education, 2012; wiki). Moreover, 1.35 million people are studying in higher education. Namely, every five people in average have studied until university education. Second, due to the deeply traditional value of Chinese, people think that “To be a scholar is to be the top of society”. No matter what kind of works or jobs children will engage in tomorrow, studying is always on the parents’ list. The third cause is unbalanced financial burden in diverse education systems. For example, Taiwan government invested 70% of funding in 71 general universities. However, up to 93 technical and vocational universities get only 30% of the total expenditure (Department of Statistics, 2012). This makes students prefer to study in normal schools rather than in technical schools.
After talking about the causes, you may curiously ask that popularization of higher education is it not a good phenomenon for the development of Taiwan. Basically, it is and it does enhance the quality of the population in Taiwan.
Do you think higher education is one of the important goals for humanization? Long time ago, education is the right only for the nobilities. On the contrary, Taiwan today, everyone can access to higher education as long as he or she strives hard enough. For the development of Taiwan and international competitiveness, the government had been investing a lot of money in order to advance higher education. Not surprisingly, higher education has become one of the unique phenomena in Taiwan nowadays. Many causes and effects are related to this phenomenon and discussed as follows.
There are three principal causes of this phenomenon. First of all, abundant universities have been founding and recruiting students actively. According to official statistics, higher education sectors in Taiwan have been increasing from 27 universities & colleges in 1960s, to 164 schools in 2012 (Ministry of education, 2012; wiki). Moreover, 1.35 million people are studying in higher education. Namely, every five people in average have studied until university education. Second, due to the deeply traditional value of Chinese, people think that “To be a scholar is to be the top of society”. No matter what kind of works or jobs children will engage in tomorrow, studying is always on the parents’ list. The third cause is unbalanced financial burden in diverse education systems. For example, Taiwan government invested 70% of funding in 71 general universities. However, up to 93 technical and vocational universities get only 30% of the total expenditure (Department of Statistics, 2012). This makes students prefer to study in normal schools rather than in technical schools.
After talking about the causes, you may curiously ask that popularization of higher education is it not a good phenomenon for the development of Taiwan. Basically, it is and it does enhance the quality of the population in Taiwan.
References: 1. Wang R. J. 2003. From elitism to mass higher education in Taiwan: The problems faced. Higher Education. 46, 261–287. 2. Taiwan Ministry of Education. Citing Websites. Retrieved Dec 4, 2012, from: http://english.moe.gov.tw/ 3. Education in Taiwan. Citing Websites. Retrieved Dec 4, 2012, from: http://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E5%8F%B0%E7%81%A3%E6%95%99%E8%82%B2 4. Department of Statistics in Ministry of Education. Citing Websites. Retrieved Dec 4, 2012, from: http://www.edu.tw/statistics/content.aspx?site_content_sn=8956