Most PhDs students will tell you the horror stories from professors who used them to pursue their own goals, published the students work -projects, articles, etc- as their own and basically lie and abuse their students, who have no recourse but to comply or they will never graduate.
Most PhDs here are people who do not need or want to graduate, as a means to avoid conscription or entering the workplace.
It is actually rare to find a professor who will help the students in their pursuit of degree and thesis completion.
Indeed. One of our fellow countrymen came to Taiwan to work on his PhD and fulfill a project, in the area of semiconductors. Such project got him in touch with scientists in US and Germany in his field and nowadays he is working on the same project but at a larger scale while teaching in the old country at college level and doing other research.
I do not see this happening at Linguistics. Physics, engineering, yes. Medicine, Chemistry, OK. Asian or Pacific Studies too. Hell, I´d have more hope for taiwanese Literature.
I will say, unless you are going for professorship, a PhD will actually make you LESS employable compared to a Bachelor’s. If you want a degree for professional jobs a masters is a better idea.
I never heard of anyone in engineering go for a PhD, most of them get a job with a bachelor’s and then maybe get a master’s.
Your level of work experience is going to matter much more compared to your degrees. Plus I’m not entirely fond of Taiwanese academia. They seem rather snobbish and I’ve seen a couple of professors who are basically a liar and crook. Military officers in Taiwan have far more honor than professors in my opinion.
I know quite a few PhDs in engineering. For high level research it is a must.
Think tsmc developing 7 nanometers wafers, designing and calculating electricity flow through this requires PhD level research to lead the team.
Depends. If you want to work in Germany, a PhD will likely boost your employability factor. Even in engineering, but it seems to apply to all of the German private sector. US employers will factor in how much more they would have to pay a PhD, and in the vast majority of cases the calculation is that, for a candidate who will have to learn the ropes no matter what, it’s not worth it. Traditionally in the US there’s a three-year learning curve for salary new hires, and usually a PhD doesn’t lessen that curve at all.
A PhD is primarily for perfecting the academic language in your area and that’s used in academic journals. Hopefully you also learn the ins and outs of publishing while working as a kind of indentured servant for your supervising prof or committee.
I agree that if you decide to go for a PhD, it should be strictly for the love of learning and the love of publishing, not for a love of income.
As someone who worked in high tech and at science unis, we must differentiate science doctorates with humanities. Both are great to expand the mind but one is a lot more lucrative and valued by society.
I’m also interested in pursuing my masters in Taiwan but I’m not sure if it’s possible in my field to do this in English (I study social psychology). If anyone has done this please let me know!! I’m going crazy trying to figure out how to do this
Somehow this didn’t age well. National disgrace in the presidential election results, recalled as mayor, then his replacement in the mayor election forged her degree. It more the person I think and less the reflection on what the school did.
Jane Lee’s degree (now revoked) from National Sun Yat-sen University was not “forged”; it was obtained through some form of academic misconduct (what seems to have been a copy-and-paste thesis). Not a good scene!
I hate plagiarists. It seems to be rampant in Asian universities. I’ve busted about a dozen students over the years for either copying articles/essays from online (you know something is up when a student who can’t normally string a coherent sentence together is suddenly writing like they’re Norman Mailer) or even more audacious just copying a classmate’s essay (which begs the question how they think they can even get away with that?).
I especially appreciate seeing sudden jarring shifts in font (and in tone) that immediately marked out the plagiarized section. Copy and search on google, bam! Problem solved. : D
They think they can get away with it because their teachers do. I worked in the past with famous professors from prestigious universities… great disappointment to see how cavalier they were with plagiarism. They were not held accountable and we could not complain as they held a lot of power and there would be consequences. So the system is held by ransom to these plagiarists.
Oh and they are also known for passing their students’ research as their own.
Academia is like that everywhere though. And its not a sinister corrupt thing, its just the only way the system can function. Trust and personal connections play a bigger role in academia than most realize.