Hence the disclosure. It is a “national” uni near me, but everyone who works at and goes there knows that’s a funny joke. I’ve had profs ask me to join their department only to back off and tell me to go somewhere worth my time in the same breath. Students who go there want to get away from their parents. They all take up smoking because it’s the only hobby available to them. It’s hardly a shining example of Taiwanese potential. I hope. I haven’t gotten to know Taida or Taishida students and profs very well, the effect of distance.
NTNU is not that good.
That doesn’t mean anything other than that it’s a public school.
Actual quote from one of my actual kids whilst undergrad at Shida:
It’s exactly like Junior High except you can stay up late.
In otherwords, the so called “best” schools are shit too. Great. I see why my junior high kids have no motivation in life
No, they aren’t.
At least comparatively.
If anyone who works at a university wants to find out what their students think of them (beyond the end of semester questionnaires) there’s almost certainly somewhere online where they tell each other which classes are tough, easy, boring etc.
Apparently mine are fun and easy to pass. I think I need to get a bit tougher with the little darlings.
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Taiwan college is lots of inattentive classes with teachers reading off powerpoints, students read the material at home and pass the tests.
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That exactly. And in spirit that’s the state of college teaching throughout the world. All the blame is put on the students’ inattention, and not a single fuck is given on how the teacher is delivering the information.
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Not according to everyone I know whose gone to both UCLA, Berkeley, Oxford or a reputable Western University and attended Grad school in Taiwan like NTU etc. Consensus seems to be US/UK University was way harder than their TW University. But Taiwan High School generally harder than in US (unless youre taking many AP courses, SAT Prep, and keeping 4.0 + GPA to get into top tier schools then its as hard as the students motivation + parents pushing them to succeed)
They say College in Taiwan workload is a joke compared to their experiences in US. Also my cousins who are Taiwanese say their HS experience in Taiwan was very difficult but College was easy in comparison
These are the exact same things I hear from my friends, family, etc. It seems like most of the universities in Taiwan are only as good as, say, some shitty state school in the US. But you have to pay out your ass for a degree from even the shittiest college in the states, so there’s that.
You might or might not depends, as long as the student goes to a public school like UCLA but is worse than UCLA, Berkeley within their state its not too bad, The problem is attending a private school like USC It can cost 4x more than UCLA. Even worse attending a Private school out of State.
There are also tons of schools cheaper than UC’s for example in California we have Cal State schools which are a level down from the UC Schools but also half the cost and even Community Colleges which are a quarter of the cost but worthless to graduate from unless its some trade certificate, like Dental assistant, electrician etc
I didn’t go to school here, but I was talking to a coworker about school in general. He was one of those kids who had to go to school from 6am-10pm for all of middle and high school, and told me that because of that, he basically slept his way through college.
A bit anecdotal I suppose but it makes sense - suddenly having freedom, free time, and being able to skip classes after years of the Taiwanese school + buxiban system might make kids go a little wild with sleeping/skipping class (similar to how kids in the US go wild with drinking).
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Not true in California. Some of the community colleges close to U.C. schools are feeder schools for the U.C.'s. Of course a student has to work to get good grades at the community college if expecting to transfer into a good UC, but it’s not unusual. I have a lot of friends who took classes at City College of San Francisco then transferred into UC Berkeley and did quite well.
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i don’t know how many credit points us unis requires but tw unis requires you to take a ridiculous amount of courses in order to graduate. e.g. mandatory “service” courses where you clean classrooms or deliver post to other departments or taking “liberal arts” courses about western musicals or visiting old people’s home.
that was very true during my time at a taiwanese uni. not every professor enforced it the same but rule of thumb was, you fail to attend more than 3 times during a semester you fail the course. some profs were pitiless, others turned a blind eye.
i heard of many profs who do that, especially at grad school level. they basically required the students to do their chores apart from the curiculum.
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Idk about undergrad but this is isn’t the case at graduate levels at all. It’s actually kinda reasonable. I think its 7 or 8 courses for Master’s. Most of the focus is on research and they don’t have any service courses.
Not just rule of thumb. That’s the official policy at my school. (Technically I think the policy is “You’re not allowed to take the final exam”, rather than “You fail the course”, but same net effect.)
Of course, official policy isn’t the same as what happens in the classroom.
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So which universities are the best in Taiwan for a student willing to put in any work necessary? I’ll have two going soon, but they might be headed to the US as well. Friends have told me lots of schools will throw money at them to get good international students.
From what I’m told it’s NTU or bust.
ntu in general is the best. chiao-tung or tsing-hua in hsinchu are renowned for stem, engineering. there are of course other good unis in taiwan but less renowned internationally.
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service courses are at undergrad level only.
i don’t know if you study as an international or local student. but imo, local grad students have to take a much heavier burden than their curriculum requires, of course this depends a lot on the prof.
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