Academic standards in local uni's

Discussion Open Forum
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[quote=“ironlady”]The first year of medical school is a dry rehash of the biology, chemistry, etc. they’ve already had in high school, so the “workload” argument doesn’t really stand up for them. They were all complaining about how boring all the classes were and how they took it in turns to skip, relying on “common notes” pooled and photocopied before exams, for which they usually had an excellent idea of the questions in advance!

Their English workload (especially for the ones who took my research writing class) was higher, because I took it as my Duty to find homework they could NOT copy from one another – i.e. totally unique for each student. That used to take up a lot of my time![/quote]

Terry - just a question - and I have no idea if TaiDa even has a medical school - but were you referring to TaiDa? I have met maybe 50 TaiDa graduates (through both work and social) and each of them speak great English and from speaking to them English is compulsorary at TaiDa.

Keen to learn more about this med school you speak of? If you cant mention it in public, swing me a PM.

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Nope, it wasn’t Tai-Da, but it did have the name of the fair city that is currently the capital of the ROC in its name… :smiley:

All I can say is that although that school had me share an office with the janitor (as an associate professor!??), HE was very nice, although we couldn’t communicate very well as he mostly spoke Hakka and was about 80 years old. But he used to tell them I was in the library when I was in the US for five weeks, so it wasn’t all bad. Some of the students were really good, and I actually ran into a night school student about two years ago who started crying when she saw me (that was scary) saying how grateful she was that I’d let her into the class as an auditor (!) THAT really made me think, gosh, as a teacher you do and say so many things and don’t really think about them, but some of the students REALLY take them seriously.

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On a related note:

[quote]Job seekers (Taiwanese) lacking international knowledge

IGNORANCE: First-time jobseekers surveyed by a job bank showed scant knowledge of geography or current affairs. Nearly half didn’t know where Greece was [/quote]

taipeitimes.com/News/taiwan/ … 2003200874

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[quote=“Screaming Jesus”]I teach at a minor private university here, and I often feel ashamed of what I do. To say cheating is rampant would be the understatement of all time. Grading standards are all over the place, but tend toward the overly lenient end of the spectrum. (I mean, it’s not as if we could flunk an entire class, is it?) Sometimes I feel that I am pretending to teach, and they are pretending to learn. It seems that all the externals (buildings, classes, degrees) are in place, but not the internal reality. I don’t know whether to blame “the system”, the students, or me.

Granted, many of the students back at my old university were less than studious, but at least there was SOME intellectual activity going on.

A colleague teaches at another minor private university, and has the same concerns. In fact, he observed that the professors routinely plagiarized their papers, which his college publishes as a journal.

I suppose things must be better at Tai-Da, Shi-Da, Zheng Da, places like that (they could hardly be worse). Does anybody else want to share their observations?[/quote]
I’m beginning to get the same impression, and that isn’t good because … I will be starting at a private university in September. I would be interested in some discussion on this topic in more detail. At this point, I’d be mostly asking “survival” questions, but that would change in time.

Noticed that Screaming Jesus, rightniao, & wha’happened? all seem to teach currently. If any one of you (or anyone else who teaches/has taught at uni) would be up for a more detailed discussion, please PM me.

Thanks,

Seeker4

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I hope it’s not ours, :smiley: - because it’s absolutely the way Screaming Jesus described…

I don’t see much difference between most departments at our school. Once I had asked freshmen at Information Management about programming languages they knew. The standard answer everywhere was “VB” (Visual Basic, more suitable for hobby programmers…), only one girl had heard of something mysterious called “C++”. When I asked them why everyone knew VB and nothing else, they just said because they were taught VB - and nothing else (at that time). Why should they learn some computer language themselves?

Even these days, quite a lot of students enroll in departments their parents have chosen, very often they don’t have the slightest interest in the matter. An Information Technology student with a solder iron? I don’t know all of them, but so far I only met two at our school. One of my students once apologized and said that she actually hated English, but her parents wanted her to study foreign languages.

“Thanks” to the exploding number of universities in the recent years, “high level” education has become what I usually call 教育批發. You get them cheaper in the dozen and even cheaper if you take three boxes. No, they are not handmade anymore, but much cheaper now… And yes, that problem does not only apply to students… :s

I must say that I’m relatively lucky with my own class. Not all of them are really “studying hard”, but I got most of them interested. Now they also care a bit more for their Chinese, it seems a bit embarrassing to be told by a foreigner that some characters were are slightly wrong… :smiley:

However, on the large scale I don’t see much light unless the MoE decides for some really drastic measures. But that’s like waiting for snow on Christmas here, isn’t it…?

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Would it not be a similar in most humanities classes worldwide?
[/quote]
I would say Taiwan is much worse. I was helping a language exchange partner with a class here, and I couldn’t believe how bad he was. He couldn’t understand the textbook, he didn’t understand even the bare basics of the information they were “taught,” and he just copied his exam answers from the internet. He said all the students were at about the same level of confusion. I have taken the same kind of course in a foreign language at a Canadian university, and there is no way in hell someone like my partner could have passed back home. He passed in Taiwan.
One of the questions on the final asked them to give a quick overview of the Renaissance, and he wrote a reply all about a Latin poet of 1400 years earlier. He passed. I’m guessing a question about the Cultural Revolution that recieved an answer about a Tang Dynasty poet wouldn’t get a passing mark in the West.

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Man, I’m getting a bit depressed reading all this. In the PRC, the students bust ass day and night. When the universities shut off the electricity at 11 p.m., the students would use flashlights to continue studying. With only a tiny percentage getting access to college at all, these guys worked like crazy. They lived in awful conditions – 6 to a room for undergraduates, 4 to a room for master’s degree students, 2 to a room for PhD candidates.

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Maybe their understanding and the general understanding is that education is about passing exams and not education

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The implication of your statement is that nobody should attend school.

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There were a lot of students in the PRC who had misperceptions about things in the wider world (naturally, considering what passes for news there), but it seemed a lot of them were trying to be academically diligent. What I’m reading here about the Taiwan students seems to match what goes on in Taiwan companies – so many people waltzing about with no idea whatsoever what they are doing.

I did more than my share of beer in college, but at least I cared very much about my major at that time and enjoyed a lot of my classes. If colleges here are a total joke, then that’s it… Taiwan will very quickly start to lose what advantages it may have enjoyed over the PRC with regards to technology, etc.

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[quote=“ironlady”]

Their English workload (especially for the ones who took my research writing class) was higher, because I took it as my Duty to find homework they could NOT copy from one another – i.e. totally unique for each student. [/quote]

And that’s an excellent strategy and one I use myself. I’d have to say that I’m not completely satisfied with the level of rigorousness at my college, but I wouldn’t say that it’s any lower than a comparable college in the US. I teach at a national college, and I find the students to be, I must say, more mature and ‘diligent’ than their counterparts in a state college in the US. For those of you who would disagree, I would ask, when was the last time you spent a considerable amount of time in a freshman class of a US college?

I also did more than my share of beer drinking in college yet always made it to class and kept up and learned what I needed to learn, and I never, ever, cheated. ‘Cheating’ is a cultural concept, and by western standards cheating here is rampant, which is why I think ironlady’s tactics are appropriate. Aside from that, I respect the amount of time and effort my students put into their studies.

I think much of what we teachers perceive as ‘slackness’ is due to our simply being older and more academically oriented. I don’t know if the same is true at private colleges, but we do flunk students, and they are required to pass standardized tests to graduate.

I must add that if you were to visit a state college or university in the US today, you’d find a lot of borderline functional illiteracy in the students’ native language with the native speakers of English.

Though I’ve had no recent presonal experience with standards in private colleges, of course competition for students will result in a lowering of standards. But the same thing is happening everywhere. It’s not unique to Taiwan. US colleges and universities are struggling to meet enrollment goals, while at the same time trying to trim costs. This results in more parttime instructors and a lowering of standards.

Ultimately, this is all due to ‘progress’ and prosperity. So, what’s the answer? I have no idea. But, at least I’m fairly happy with the standards being maintained at my school, and I think that on an individual level all we can do is try to maintain our own personal standards as teachers.

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I’m not denying anything you say, hoedad, but it’s interesting to think that all these freshmen have had – how many hours of buxiban, extra classes, and the like – and now they “can’t” do things or “don’t know how to” study?

Systemic flaw, sounds like…

33

I taught a journalism class (in English) at a local college about ten years back. My students were all 20 or 21. I didn’t have the same problems that others reported in terms of immaturity or a lack of academic inquisitiveness.

Getting them to speak their minds, ask questions, or question my opinions was tough, but after a few months about 30 to 40 percent got used to the idea and would participate regularly in discussions about Taiwan and foreign mass media.

Of course, there was a difficulty related to differences between student/teacher interactions in Taiwan and what I was used to. The idea of asking a teacher a question in class was an uncomfortable thought for many of my Taiwanese students. Apparently, high school students in Taiwan don’t (or didn’t) ask teachers many questions at the secondary school level, and perhaps at the college level as well.

In addition, speaking to teachers in front of their peers in English was a “face” issue for some of them. I tried to play down problems with incorrect spoken English, while praising interesting ideas or questions. It seemed to work after a month or two; discussions definitely picked up. A sense of humor helped, as well as good handouts and other teaching aids (newspaper clippings, videotapes, etc.). .

It also helped to prepare in advance vocabulary lists, which they could review with the help of a dictionary before the next class.

The one area which caused problems for a small number of students (two or three out of 35) was plagiarism on the short essay assignments. I warned them beforehand not to do it, and gave a handout explaining exactly what I meant by “plagiarism”, but a few did it anyway. Plagiarism is a problem in the West, but in Taiwan it was easy to pick out because of the obvious quality differences. In two cases I was able to quickly identify the website or book where they got the story; these students got Fs. There were a couple of students who had trouble with writing but came up with insightful opinions in their essays, which I thought was encouraging.

Overall, I’d say the ratio of slackers to intelligent students in my college class in Taiwan was on a par with what I experienced as a college student in the U.S. Maybe the subject or the school could explain the differences with what other posters have reported at colleges in Taiwan …