I’m on a masters scholarship (Taiwan scholarship) from the MOE. I wonder if anyone knows what the mechanisms are for universities reporting attendance and grades from the universities to the MOE.
I know that the language classes report attendance every month and attendance every semester, but for the university courses?
Anyone know?
I don’t think attendance matters, only grades. You have to keep a certain average to maintain the scholarship. I’m not 100% certain about this, but to my knowledge, there was no centralized attendance tallying function at the university where I did my MA in Taiwan, so there would have been no way to report such things to the MOE or anyone else. (Not that we dared skip many classes…er, um, well, apart from “History of Translation”, maybe. But since they never seemed to find out about it and cut my scholarship, more evidence that attendance probably doesn’t count once you’re in an MA program.) 
I knew two foreigners who refused to attend a single session of a class taught by a professor they considered to be incompetent to teach the subject. The only consequence was that they were forced to write a letter of apology at the end of the semester. I don’t think they were even failed for the course. I’m not sure if they were on scholarship, but I think at least one of them would have been.
Thanks Ironlady, I’m sympathetic to those two foreigners. I’m at Taida now and some of the lecturers are out of this world lazy/incompetent. In one class we were told to learn the names of all the heads of state in Asia and proceeded to name some of them (one or two incorrectly), and then said that he didn’t know the rest, but that we should. I was told by a professor that if students plagiarise that’s a shame, but what can you do, failing them is too harsh, which explains the plagiarism that went on in my international intellectual property class.
It’s like being down the rabbit hole, and I’d like to give myself a break from some of the most cringe-worthy classes sometimes. It’s a problem when you’re a white face and get singled out when the lecturer’s ego is in need of some massaging. They kind of notice when you’re not there.
I’m really wondering if it’s worth continuing to study here.
Oh, the irony!!
Best way to no longer be singled out is to go on the offensive (mildly) at the beginning of the class. Ask a zinger of a question on the first day, one that makes the prof uncomfortable. Odds are he won’t make eye contact with you for the rest of the semester. Worked for me. But admittedly I did have to show up for class because of the “that white girl” syndrome. But mobile Internet and a laptop made it much more productive than it would otherwise have been.