Hi,
I intend to apply for a PhD program in computer science in Taiwan next year.
I would like to know if anyone has already done or is doing its PhD in Taiwan and what he feels about doing it in Taiwanese universities.
This year I am studying Chinese.
Thanks
Bruno
I know people doing this, and they all seem to have ended up as full-time RAs (read lackeys), without much time to pursue their own work. Perhaps they don’t really need to write anything original, but just copy their supervisors? Plagiarism is rife here, as you probably know.
I wonder what the advantages of your plan are for you (as against doing a PhD back home)?
[quote=“smithsgj”]
I wonder what the advantages of your plan are for you (as against doing a PhD back home)?[/quote]
I joined my Taiwanese wife here in Taiwan. I do not intend to go back home in the years to come. I think about doing this PhD instead of working immediately as an telecommunications engineer, my last job.
I would like to work in labs and teach in Taiwan universities. Without PhD and due to my work experience (less than 3 years for Motorola and Freescale Semiconductors), I think it will be impossible to do it.
I search for foreigners who intend to do or are currently doing this kind of PhD. Any contacts can help me 
Thanks for your response
Bruno.
Hi Bruno:
I think you are making an excellent choice. People who follow their spouses to Taiwan can have a tough time adjusting, but I think a major project like a PhD will give you something to do and make it easier. Taiwan has good CS programs and everything is in English anyway besides the lectures, so I think you will do fine. The sciences and engineering are generally much better than the humanities and social studies programs most foreiegners are dealing with.
Keep an open mind and a sense of humor anmd I’m sure you will do fine. Where will you be living? With your background, the Hsinchu area would be a natural choice.
I guess as long as the PHD course is associated with the Washington Concord or someother organization for acedmic qualifications… otherwise if you take it outside Taiwan it may have little value
You are absolutely right. Degrees obtained in Taiwan will have little value or recognition outside of this island. Put in two years of fulltime study (for the residence requirement) in the US, and then return to Taiwan.
I think an exception would be a degree from National Taiwan University (國立臺灣大學).
If you are an American, foreign degrees tend to carry a little bit of a premium, especially in business and industry. This could possibly justify studying at other Taiwan universities.
Call me old fashioned, but I think the value of the degree is what you learn while you are doing it. If the OP does serious work at one of Taiwan’s National Universities and publishes papers in English on important topics, his degree will be ‘recognized.’ It also helps that he is in a technical field.
People do not typically look as much at where you did your PhD, with some exceptions for particular schools/programs, as much as what you did it on and what you have written/published. It is not the quality of the school as much as the quality and outcome of the research.
I agree 75% with the last two posts. A lot of it depends on what your long-term career goals are, e.g., if you want a faculty position at a ‘top’ university.
I’ve spoken to my Ph.D. adviser and other faculty about this, and to them it matters. And if it matters to them, it matters to you because they make the hiring decisions. (A factor in this might be that all the faculty themselves have degrees from ‘top’ universities.)
This is the OPs goal. To do this, a PhD from a Taiwanese university will be acceptable. Naturally, Taiwanese universities recognize their own degrees. I think in some fields like EE, you have at least an equal shot with a degree in Taiwan for a job in Taiwan.
Again, it really depends on the field. Technical subjects in Taiwan are much more internationalized than in other fields. And these fields are also quite a bit more egalitarian that the humanities or social sciences. If you do good work and have the minumum qualifications (which a PhD from Taiwan would qualify as), you should be able to find some kind of work.
This is the OPs goal. To do this, a PhD from a Taiwanese university will be acceptable. Naturally, Taiwanese universities recognize their own degrees. I think in some fields like EE, you have at least an equal shot with a degree in Taiwan for a job in Taiwan.
[/quote]
Ahhh… I forgot about that.
I’ve looked at doing graduate work in Taiwan as well. I hope someone pipes in here with experiences from scientific and engineering fields, but I doubt that will happen. If you look at the enrollment in these programs in Taiwan, students from English speaking countries are very few. However, there are a few people with Taiwan graduate degrees in other fields floating around Forumosa.
I wanted to do my graduate degree (Masters) in computer or electrical engineering here, but I didn’t find any of the schools here teach in English. For engineering they all required fluent (take test to prove it) chinese ability, and the Univ’s here don’t seem to be very good (so if I left da island, da degree would be useless).
I also heard da univ;s here are diff style, kinda high skule like, they take attendance, and they don’t teach outside of the box thinking, but its all hearsay.
If you do decide to do your P.hD here, plz post what Univ. it is, and your experience there.
I;ve moved on, and will go to Cornell instead, but Taiwan’s Univ’s are enticing cause they are ridiculously cheap when it comes to tuition fees.
Judging by your amazing use of the English language here… are you sure any university would let you enroll back home?
My thoughts exactly.
Anyway, that is an important point: if the program you enroll in is not a “special” one (like the all-English MBA programs and suchlike) you will need GOOD (and I mean GOOD) Mandarin. You will be expected to participate in class discussions, read (although a lot of the reading would be in English in many cases) and write papers in Chinese. Nothing more than one or two years at Shida beforehand aren’t going to be good enough in most cases.
The complexity of the Chinese exam varies by school and department in some cases, but the other problem with the Chinese language “proficiency” exams used is that they are not proficiency exams…they are exams usually written by people who are thinking about I don’t know what. In other words, the exam doesn’t really test how you could manage to get through a degree using Chinese, it’s something like the TOEFL (how many chengyu do you know? Personally if I see four characters together and I don’t know what it means, I just assume it’s a chengyu and skip it if I can or look it up if I can’t.)
Thanks for all your posts, it helps me to better prepare my decisions how to handle this PhD in Taiwan.
As I am living near Tainan, I seriously think about applying to the CS department of National Cheng Kung University. As my specialities are wireless communications and embedded software,I know that Hsinchu will be an ideal choice, but I am convinced that CK could be a great choice. I intend to meet the teachers and discuss with them about my plan of study. There is also an industrial science park that I intend to visit.
I am now studying Chinese in the Chinese Language Center of CK and it is a nice place in Tainan.
There were several posts related to the recognition of Taiwan PhD.
I do not fear about the general status of the recognition of my PhD. I have worked for a few years for a worldwide company. When people realize how good you are in your speciality, they do not think or forget to ask you for your studies background and focus on the future tasks to do. We never talked about it, no time for chatting about this! I am not intend to search a position in “top” universities, I intend to be good in my speciality and work in a university. I prefer to win the international recognition of my university that working for a famous place.Yes, I am the kind of guys who like the challenges. If the people with the hiring decisions are quite smart (Normally they have to be smart),I will have my own chance.
Morever before to start this PhD, I aim at becoming quite proficient in speaking Mandarin and reading/writting Chinese (I feel it hard and work a lot every day) as soon as possible. So if I have to leave Taiwan and find a faculty position, I am sure universities will be interested by my proficiency in Chinese.
I would like to know if there are any foreign guys who have been working both in Taiwan and other areas (Europe,USA, Japan, China) in the wireless telecommunications sector. Their experience and advices will be precious.
[quote=“bruno”]Thanks for all your posts, it helps me to better prepare my decisions how to handle this PhD in Taiwan.
As I am living near Tainan, I seriously think about applying to the CS department of National Cheng Kung University. As my specialities are wireless communications and embedded software,I know that Hsinchu (Xinzhu) will be an ideal choice, but I am convinced that CK could be a great choice. I intend to meet the teachers and discuss with them about my plan of study. There is also an industrial science park that I intend to visit.
I am now studying Chinese in the Chinese Language Center of CK and it is a nice place in Tainan.
There were several posts related to the recognition of Taiwan PhD.
I do not fear about the general status of the recognition of my PhD. I have worked for a few years for a worldwide company. When people realize how good you are in your speciality, they do not think or forget to ask you for your studies background and focus on the future tasks to do. We never talked about it, no time for chatting about this! I am not intend to search a position in “top” universities, I intend to be good in my speciality and work in a university. I prefer to win the international recognition of my university that working for a famous place.Yes, I am the kind of guys who like the challenges. If the people with the hiring decisions are quite smart (Normally they have to be smart),I will have my own chance.
Morever before to start this PhD, I aim at becoming quite proficient in speaking Mandarin and reading/writting Chinese (I feel it hard and work a lot every day) as soon as possible. So if I have to leave Taiwan and find a faculty position, I am sure universities will be interested by my proficiency in Chinese.
I would like to know if there are any foreign guys who have been working both in Taiwan and other areas (Europe,USA, Japan, China) in the wireless telecommunications sector. Their experience and advices will be precious.[/quote]
yours goals are very admirable. Although I am curious how many IEEE articles/publications or international conference papers that are accepted come from TW? In Academia they don;t kare so much bout working experiences as they do about research and publicationz. U may find dat the research groupz in TW don’t get da funding their counterpartz in N.America get, and P.hD’s are all about research. U aren’t building wireless links so much as researching new ones.
In short, I feel the task of:
would be quite daunting considering da resources here, but if U do succeed, all da more satisfaction u should have.