To start things off, I came to Taiwan a few years ago for a summer teaching program in Tainan. I learned after arriving that it was not exactly above board. ANYWAYS, I love it. I was heart broken leaving Taiwan and ever since I have secretly fantasized about returning. I’ve been reading lately that more and more English taught BA programs are becoming available in Taiwan. This interests me greatly.
My question is, has anyone had experience with any of these programs? Do you know anyone who has gone through one?
Got quite a few friends who are going through some…!
Generally 100% English taught programmes are English Lit. (and then only if there’s a special reason why - i.e. this year’s English Lit first years at my school are being taught entirely in English because they have a Ecuadorean who spoke neither Chinese nor English in the class). Most programmes are taught in Chinese but all of the material is in English. Some instructions and homework is Chinese, and exams, and generally you just have to go to the teacher and say ‘I don’t speak Chinese’ and they sort something out for you.
[quote=“tsukinodeynatsu”]Got quite a few friends who are going through some…!
Generally 100% English taught programmes are English Lit. (and then only if there’s a special reason why - i.e. this year’s English Lit first years at my school are being taught entirely in English because they have a Ecuadorean who spoke neither Chinese nor English in the class). Most programmes are taught in Chinese but all of the material is in English. Some instructions and homework is Chinese, and exams, and generally you just have to go to the teacher and say ‘I don’t speak Chinese’ and they sort something out for you.[/quote]
That’s quite an impriovement from before, where even English literature was taught in Chinese. sigh
Yes, more and more courses are being offered by universities in English, not inbly literture, but most other subjects. So, it depends on what teh OP wants to study here. There are many options.
Tyebud, what would you like to study? What are you interested in? You can still take Chinese lessons on the side, it can be an all taught in English, all taught in Chinese, taught in both, but most importantly, what is your interest? If only Chinese, what about the Chinese mayor in NTNU? It is taught in Linkou, and you get something like a BA in Chinese for foreigners.
MBAs are aplenty, and there are more options taught in English if that’s a factor. Any specific preference?
How come nobody has yet come up with a college in Taiwan that is all taught in ENGLISH?? So many TW students go to the USA why not bring a bit of the USA to Taiwan?
Especially since Taiwan wants its people to be able to use English and is considering Engish as a national language.
Would there not be enough students?
Not talking about a Univ with 30,000 students, but rather a college with say 1000 per grade?
The problem with that would be getting a good reputation. Taiwanese go to US schools because an honors degree from Carnegie Melon or Stanford stands out far more than from Tamking. To be honest I even question the desire to learn English. I visited Johns Hopkins and saw a Comp Sci lecture entirely in Mandarin because the professor and students in the course were all Chinese.
[quote=“tommy525”]How come nobody has yet come up with a college in Taiwan that is all taught in ENGLISH?? So many TW students go to the USA why not bring a bit of the USA to Taiwan?
Especially since Taiwan wants its people to be able to use English and is considering Engish as a national language.
Would there not be enough students?
[/quote]
I would say there wouldn’t be enough students with good enough English to do it. I tutored one young man whose spoken English was great, and was majoring in English at a university in Taipei. He had nowhere near the reading comprehension necessary to deal with the textbooks. The prof used the same textbooks that would be used in a English lit/Western culture survey course in the USA. Even with a great deal of help, he couldn’t figure out even the most basic information from a paragraph of those textbooks, never mind all 1,000 pages of them. He told me no one in the class could understand the textbooks. Nevertheless, they all passed, and got what in my univeristy back home would be considered sky-high grades.
To answer your questions, I would like to focus on business and finance. However, the NTNU Chinese degree sounds pretty interesting as well, albeit in the complete opposite direction of business. At the same time I’ve always wanted to learn computer programming. I don’t know how prevalent that is, but just another interest.
What are the “top” schools in the Taipei area?
Also, in regards to competition, are foreigners accepted on the same criteria as locals, or is there a separate pool for them? Then of course, what is the competition like?
They have different quotas for international and domestic students. International students compete in their own pool, and each school is different.
The best school in Taiwan is National Taiwan University (NTU), located in Gongguan (Taipei). The close second and third universities are National Tsinghua University (NTHU) and National Chiao-Tung University (NCTU), both of which are in Hsinchu. Other great, top-ranking universities in Taipei are NTNU (National Taiwan Normal University) and National Chengchi University (NCCU), although NCCU is a bit further in Muzha. Fu-Jen Catholic University is sort of in Taipei (Luzhou, Taipei County), as is Tamkang (Danshui).
When ever there’s a post about English undergrad programs in Taiwan I wonder what’s the point? Even if you go to NTU your degree will be virtually worthless anywhere in the western world and you won’t be able to do anything in Taiwan after graduation because of subpar Chinese.
Seems like a complete waste of time but maybe I’m missing something.
[quote=“mpallard”]When ever there’s a post about English undergrad programs in Taiwan I wonder what’s the point? Even if you go to NTU your degree will be virtually worthless anywhere in the western world and you won’t be able to do anything in Taiwan after graduation because of subpar Chinese.
Seems like a complete waste of time but maybe I’m missing something.[/quote]
I am assuming you’re better off with a degree at the university of phoenix compared to a NTU degree in the Western world?
Worthless, eh? I wouldn’t go that far. North American universities definitely accept ROC national university degrees as satisfying basic requirements on having a first degree. The real question is how they would actually rate that degree and its holder when weighed against a pile of other applicants.
I and a few other people have written on these forums before that Taiwan can be a good place to do a degree-especially a post-grad degree-if it is in something which Taiwanese institutions are well qualified to teach. A masters, and even a PhD in Chinese lit or history from one of the top 3 national universities is well regarded within those disciplines in the west as long as the student has stayed plugged into the English language scholarly publication machine. This of course requires effort from the student, but is doable.
Doing a BA in English at a Taiwanese university doesn’t seem so advisable to me. If you did it at one of the better universities, it would likely be considered back in the west as satisfying requirements for a basic degree, but nothing more. I question how much one could get intellectually from such a program anyway.
Well, OP is interested in business or computer science. I refer to programs taught in English language, Heaven forbid just English literature BA from a Taiwanese university. Some people I know have done that just to use their scholarship in something that will allow them to stay here in Taiwan longer, but that is not the idea. Most on this track do not complete their studies, and that is such a waste.
NTU is well recognized abroad, as are many other universities, especially teh ones that have links to other institutes abroad. Many Western institutions/universities will recognize the “globalized” concept, the “international experience”, plus after 4 years, his Chinese should be quite nice, actually, enough for working along, if not for translating. If the OP is dedicated, and if that is his interest, he can go on to specialties in Asian Studies or anything related which advances his graduate studies. It depends on how he plays/uses it.
Seems like most Taiwanese who can afford it go overseas – pretty much ANYWHERE will do, it seems, as long as its not Taiwan – to do those subjects if they can find a way. That should tell you what you need to know, surely?
Yeah, yeah, yeah, sure. The government is all too keen to tout its schools as good. But people vote with their feet. And their feet, if they can POSSIBLY manage it, take them overseas. Every time.
Even a pissant wee school in the US or Britland is preferable to the best Taiwan has to offer, for anyone here looking for a parchment that’ll give them a bit more than NT$35k a month working all the hours god sends. Or so it seems to me. Seems like a HELL of a gamble for three or four years of your life.
I would say that undergrad degrees from certain disciplines in Taiwan would be just as valuable as degrees from other universities in the western world. For instance, I would say that if you had the brains to graduate with a B.S. or M.S. in chemistry from NTU or NTHU it wouldn’t be a worthless degree, per se, seeing Y.T. Lee the Nobel Laureate graduated from those departments himself. Top research institutions in Taiwan like Academia Sinica, NTU, NTHU etc., also do relatively good research in the hard sciences and are able to publish their work in some of the top or near-top quality peer-reviewed journals.
(For the record, I didn’t get my degrees in Taiwan, and the observations are based on what I saw in undergrad and grad school back in the States.)
[quote=“catfish13”]I would say that undergrad degrees from certain disciplines in Taiwan would be just as valuable as degrees from other universities in the western world. For instance, I would say that if you had the brains to graduate with a B.S. or M.S. in chemistry from NTU or NTHU it wouldn’t be a worthless degree, per se, seeing Y.T. Lee the Nobel Laureate graduated from those departments himself. Top research institutions in Taiwan like Academia Sinica, NTU, NTHU etc., also do relatively good research in the hard sciences and are able to top their work in some of the top or near-top quality peer-reviewed journals.
(For the record, I didn’t get my degrees in Taiwan, and the observations are based on what I saw in undergrad and grad school back in the States.)[/quote]
But you are talking about the absolute creme de la creme, and those individuals will tend to rise to the top no matter where they come from. For yer actual, normal Joe, it 'aint like that at ALL!
If you really just want to “learn computer programming” you are best suited to buying a book and doing it in your spare time. An undergraduate degree in Comp Sci requires a crapload more work(Programming, high level math, Engineering) than an Undergrad Degree in Business(Which pretty much requires only a pulse). You would probably hate the Asian way of teaching comp sci anyways. They focus more on the grindy code part than the actual discipline.
The problem for the OP is how good a program taught in English in Taiwan would be compared to the same program taught in an English-speaking country. From the Taiwanese students I’ve seen, the level of English used will mean the class will have to be pretty basic, too basic to offer a real education to a native speaker of English. If you just want a degree, fine, but it would seem to be a waste of time to me.
It would be like a native speaker of Chinese from Taiwan going to my hometown in Canada to major in Chinese. The university would let him, sure, but his Chinese is going to be so much better than even the most gifted and diligent of his fellow students that the courses offered will be too easy for him (even if extremely challenging for his non-Chinese classmates), and he’ll end up with an easy degree, but not with what anyone could call a university education.
Yet thousands of Taiwanese students go to Canada -current number 2 choice, if I’m not mistaken- to study chemistry, economics, even translation -bless their souls- all taught in English…
Edit:
what I mean to say is that the OP can find a subject matter taught in English here, taht does not quite stand to your analogy of studying Chinese in a university abroad, which by teh way, teh guys who study say at Ediumburg College always amaze the locals with their knowledge of classical chinese. Yes, furriners.
[quote=“Icon”]Yet thousands of Taiwanese students go to Canada -current number 2 choice, if I’m not mistaken- to study chemistry, economics, even translation -bless their souls- all taught in English…
[/quote]
If the OP wanted to come to a Taiwanese university and study something in Chinese, fine, I’d say if his Chinese is good enough, why not? He’ll learn the subject matter and his Chinese will improve a lot. But coming to Taiwan to study something in English seems pointless.
The Taiwanese students at Canadian universities are not usually majoring in Chinese! Any that are, I’d have to say that the majority are doing it just for the easy degree, not to learn anything.