Undergrad Education in Taiwan

If I read it correctly the OP wasn’t looking for a high quality degree that he can use anywhere else in the world. He just wants to come back to Taiwan. If he doesn’t have a college degree, then teaching is out of the question. So, if he is just looking for a visa into the 'wan, then going to a university is pretty much his only option.

[quote=“bababa”][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…

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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.[/quote]

The OP is NOT looking to major in English. He is interested in finding a program (ECONOMICS or COMPUTER SCIENCE) with its coursework in English. With your analogy, every American or Canadian in his/her North American university majoring in anything that is taught in English is only doing it just for the “easy” degrees.

And plus, I don’t believe a decent enough university will let a native speaker major in his or her native language. When I was in undergrad, native speakers of foreign languages were FORBIDDEN to even take a language class that is of their native language. The restrictions for foreign literature were lessened, but it was typically up to the department’s discretion to let a perspective student in their department if he/she was a native speaker of the foreign language. This was aside from English lit of course, but it’s not like a native English speaker will be able to graduate with highest honors while majoring in English lit.

[quote=“catfish13”][quote=“bababa”][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.[/quote]

The OP is NOT looking to major in English. He is interested in finding a program (ECONOMICS or COMPUTER SCIENCE) with its coursework in English. With your analogy, every American or Canadian in his/her North American university majoring in anything that is taught in English is only doing it just for the “easy” degrees.

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If the OP comes to Taiwan and majors in economics, for example, at a Taiwanese university that teaches in English, the majority, or maybe all, of the other students will be Taiwanese students whose English is not good enough to be doing university-level work in economics in English. Since the OP is a native speaker of English (I think), this means the course will be too easy for him. I’ve taught at a Taiwanese university, and tutored Taiwanese who were majoring in English. The students I’ve met could no more understand a university-level textbook written in English than the average American majoring in Chinese at an American university could read a Chinese textbook designed for native Chinese speakers. I know two women who graduated from Taida who probably could have handled it, though one did go to grad school in the USA and had a hard time with the material, and one absolute genius who, yes, could have read anything in English. The other students could not have handled it, thus making any course designed for them pointless for the OP.

If he just wants an excuse to get a visa so he can stay in Taiwan, fine.

My analogy is this: the University of Western Ontario opens up a course in economics leading to a B.A., taught entirely in Chinese. 95% of the students are Canadians who are native speakers of English, who have studied Chinese but can not read it very well. The students cannot understand the textbooks, but the profs can’t fail everyone, so the course is made easier - still challenging for non-native speakers of Chinese, but a simpler textbook is provided, essays are not required, tests are made extremely easy. Then a couple of Taiwanese students decide to take this course. Obviously they would be able to ace the class without doing much work. If they’re just doing it to get a visa to stay in Canada, fine. I would question any other motive they claimed to have, however.

Wow!

It appears I have stumbled upon quite the debate.

I should probably give you a little more information which could possibly, HOPEFULLY, give you all a better idea for what I am after. I am in my late twenties. I have been self employed for the past several years, successfully. Thanks to this success and a few other factors that have presented themselves, the opportunity to live abroad for a while is more realistic than ever.

With that said, I feel an international perspective would be invaluable for my endeavors in business. Maybe I am wrong.

However, I definitely appreciate the fact that an English taught program in a Mandarin speaking university will lack the punch that a similar program taught in the states would have. So, that leads me to my next question.

What if I went through one of these one to two year Mandarin programs? Would it prepare me enough to attempt a Mandarin taught business program in Taiwan? I feel it would also act as a probationary - will you even like studying in Taiwan - period in which i could decide if I really am interested in committing to a four year program.

Again, thank you all. I relish the diverse opinion.

I honestly don’t think it’s much of a debate. An undergrad degree from a program taught in English is only good for the visa it provides. I guarantee you that if you were to try using that degree to get a job back home it would be completely useless and could even work against you. Employers would certainly see it for what it is, an excuse to slack off for four years.

I feel that if you are going to make an honest effort at doing an undergrad program in Chinese you need, at an absoloute minimum, two years of in-country language training. Anything less than that and you’ll just be struggling by and will need to rely on too much English for the experience to be of value.

No, I think you are right, but I don’t think wasting your time for 4 years taking micky mouse courses will help. Come to Taiwan and study Chinese - you’ll learn a lot about the country and Chinese/Taiwanese culture.

No you are correct. Companies (Especially American) love to see international experience on a resume. However what they mean by international experience is working abroad for foreign companies and extra languages. They don’t give 2 shits about the “enlightening” 4 years you spent in undergrad in another country. College is an isolated bubble and you are not actually learning how foreigners live day to day. You don’t see how workers complain, how the offices are organized, how to get some worker to do stuff, etc.

Also, if you want to put Chinese on a resume, you best be ready to speak it. I am a computer scientist. I taught myself up to B-2 German in a year and a half of working there, but it looked shady because I did not have any German school under education (just Goethe B-2). Sure enough I call into the first interview and they informed me we would do the entire thing in German. I highly recommend taking mandarin degree here if you really want such a bullet for your resume.

My degree looks the same as anybody else’s, it does not say it was taught in English. I also studied Chinese previously, but most importantly, I have work experience here and abroad. All these gives me the confidence to look for a job anywhere, and it makes me attractive to employers as I have contacts in Taiwan -from the studies here, this is the most valuable item- and elsewhere from other international students who were here with me. Plus I can give my poiint of view of living here for anyone planning to enter the market or make business with Taiwanese people. I am not an expert but certainly I may know more than anybody who has not been here. Those are the advantages of studying here.

The degree is as valuable as what you do with it, here or abroad.

To be honest, few programs are 100% English taught. 50% of the classmates, at least, are Taiwanese, and they are not paying premium for Mickey Mouse degree. Any student will get as much as he puts into it.

A bit on the news… pity it’ll be ready in September, after everyone has chosen already… maybe next year…

[quote]The Ministry of Education hopes to provide information on Taiwan’s top 50 universities and colleges and 100 best international student programs in the near future as a reference for foreign students, a ministry official said yesterday.
The lists are part of the ministry’s initiative to attract candidates from abroad by selling Taiwan’s quality of teaching and learning environment rather than offering more scholarships, Bureau of International Cultural and Educational Relations Director-General Liu Ching-jen (劉慶仁) said.

The list of 100 programs is scheduled to be posted on the ministry’s Web site in September, said Jennie Y. Wu (吳亞君), a researcher at the bureau’s Program Office.

We will also classify the 100 programs into four categories — more than 90 percent taught in English, between 75 percent and 95 percent in English, under 75 percent and those taught entirely in Chinese — so that students can choose programs according to their language abilities,” she said.
/quote]

taipeitimes.com/News/taiwan/ … 2003475055

[quote=“Icon”]
To be honest, few programs are 100% English taught. 50% of the classmates, at least, are Taiwanese, and they are not paying premium for Mickey Mouse degree.[/quote]
The question is, what percentage of the the classmates were native speakers of English? Taiwanese and foreigners who are not native speakers of English may well find these courses challenging; would a native speaker of English? I would find it hard to believe.
And lots of Taiwanese students view university as a time to have fun, not as a time to study. Their parents are in fact paying premium for a Mickey Mouse degree. I’ve taught at a university in Taiwan, and I couldn’t believe how bad the students were. True, it was a bad university, but the students were getting degrees that looked just as good as anyone else’s degree.

If you are paying 2K for each credit, you can lounge, at 10K things start getting serious… or at least should. Of course, my experience is at graduate level, I know those undergrads are a headache. But everybody is interested in a useful piece of paper…

BTW, our experience as students was this: whiel foreigners had trouble with stuff like Math, the locals struggled with language issues, so we were basically at some point meeting halfway. In an internationalized environmentm you are using English to communicate; as a matter of fact, English is used more as a tool of communication -and by more I mean more people- all over the world between non-Native speakers than by natives. You do not have to be 100% correct to get teh meaning across. Even totally Chinese taught courses still resort to books written in English -those are the originals.

And the degree has the same info -but the weight of the name of the university is what matters most. We used to complain about it back home: unless someone sees your grade records, your degree looks as valuable as the one who slouched and slept through teh four years, got a C and passed, even though you burned the midnight oil and got an A. It still will show in your work performance, though.

[quote=“bababa”][quote=“Icon”]
To be honest, few programs are 100% English taught. 50% of the classmates, at least, are Taiwanese, and they are not paying premium for Mickey Mouse degree.[/quote]
The question is, what percentage of the the classmates were native speakers of English? Taiwanese and foreigners who are not native speakers of English may well find these courses challenging; would a native speaker of English? I would find it hard to believe.
And lots of Taiwanese students view university as a time to have fun, not as a time to study. Their parents are in fact paying premium for a Mickey Mouse degree. I’ve taught at a university in Taiwan, and I couldn’t believe how bad the students were. True, it was a bad university, but the students were getting degrees that looked just as good as anyone else’s degree.[/quote]

Native English speakers at North American and English colleges flunk classes all the time, so I still don’t believe native English speakers have easier times in English-instruction college classes here in Taiwan, especially at tough subjects in top universities. Tons of universities in Taiwan also use English textbooks that are on par if not identical to the books used overseas. If you’re taking a freshman biology class in Taiwan, chances are you use Campbell’s Biology, just as you would at places like Berkeley, Stanford, Yale or Harvard; while you might be able to buy Vollhardt’s Organic Chemistry or Harvey’s Simply Scheme in Chinese translations, instructors still would’ve taught out of the original texts as they would at Berkeley, Caltech or MIT.

I took an English Lit class here and found it quite difficult.

I did rarely show up to class, though. The other English guy who DID show up to class all the time also said it was pretty tough.

[quote=“catfish13”]
Tons of universities in Taiwan also use English textbooks that are on par if not identical to the books used overseas. [/quote]
Yeah, and my experience has been that the average Taiwanese student can’t understand them.
I’m thinking of one girl I know who is studying law at a university in Taipei. The textbooks are in English. She is very interested in law, and is studying diligently. She had a hard time with the textbooks at first, but now finds it easier. She tried hard, and so her English reading ability improved a great deal, and she has learned a lot about the law. Most of her fellow students are not interested, can’t be bothered to do the work necessary to simply understand the basic meaning of the textbooks, do not pay attention in class or even go to class, usually, and do not read the textbooks - because they are simply too difficult. Nevertheless everyone is ‘passing the course’. IMO, this course cannot possibly be the equivalent of a law course at a university in the States, even if they are using the same textbooks.

[quote=“bababa”][quote=“catfish13”]
Tons of universities in Taiwan also use English textbooks that are on par if not identical to the books used overseas. [/quote]
Yeah, and my experience has been that the average Taiwanese student can’t understand them.[/quote]

And the average American college student can’t understand those textbooks either back home, or else why would people fail classes and drop out of college in the US? Like I said before, it’s not like just because you can speak and read English you’ll be able to pass a class taught in English at North American universities.

And I’m pretty sure people in Taiwan use the same set of mathematical symbols and expressions as Americans and Europeans as well. So for a science or engineering major, even if they have problem understanding everything in a book, they’ll still be able to read and understand the equations if they put their mind to it.

Those who go to college with the intent of partying all day and breezing through four years without learning a single thing can be found on both sides of the pond. So putting those aside, those who have the desire to learn will work through the pain and try their best to get through the class even if it means they need to bust out the dictionary to translate every word in a boring tome.

I don’t know too many “average” university students here, but where I work people seem to have a fairly good grasp of the English language. They probably won’t be giving keynote speeches at international events and conferences or writing bestselling novels in English anytime soon, but none of them went to college overseas. Most of those do have masters in the hard sciences from places like NTU, Tsinghua, Chengkung, Yangming, etc., so I guess they aren’t “average” at all.

Rest assured, they’re not going to dumb down the curriculum just because they are required to do it in English and most of the students don’t understand it well enough, at least not at the top places. And I’m sure it won’t be difficult at all to find native or very fluent English speakers who flunk English-only courses.

I spent my third year university on exchange in Hong Kong. All classes were in English as I didn’t speak a word of Cantonese.

The humanities courses were a joke. The entire class was spent understanding the meaning of whatever we were reading. Actually, it was more like an advanced ESL course. There was no analysis or meaningfull class discussion in any way. To study for finals most of my classmates simply memorized entire paragraphs from the readings and somehow this allowed them to pass.

However, with that said, the accouting courses were more advanced than those I’d taken back home. This was likely due to HK students taking a lot of accounting in high school.

Anyway, the university experience that the HK students were getting seemed far inferior to the one I was receiving in Canada.

I guess my point is that after a year that was probably the most I was going to get out of the experience without speaking the language. If I had chosen to spend 4 years in HK and graduated there I would not have been able to do much because of my lack of languages and comming back home would have also been difficult as employers would have, rightfully, placed more value on degrees earned in Canada. At that point I would have had no choice but a dead end career in English teaching.

I’m studying for a BA in Chinese Literature at Tamkang University in Danshui, currently cramming for a final I have on Monday, yuck. All my classes are taught in Chinese, except for some core courses provided for the foreign students who don’t speak much Chinese (Global Technology Revolution, Intro to Computers zzzzzzz). The teachers’ English isn’t very good at all, which was a bonus in the computer class, because he always let us go after only one hour, because he couldn’t do two hours in English! My major requirs that I take 2 years of English (yeah, dumb, that’s my native language), and even that course is taught mostly in Chinese, to my total disbelief (Taiwanese teacher, not a foreign teacher). I took an Introduction to Teaching Mandarin class that said it would be taught in English. It’s not. The teacher has maybe spoken 20 sentences in English all semester. Good thing I understand Chinese, huh?

Most of the other foreign students I know are studying International Trade or Business. They have English textbooks, English tests (wah! I want English tests, too!), English instruction (but they all say they have difficulty understand their teachers’ English). They come from places like Africa, El Salvador, Iraq, islands I’ve even heard of, been kinda cool learning about their countries. I know one other American who is in the Master’s Program in Chinese Literature, and he feels just about the same as I do about the conditions under which we study.

I would never recommend university in Taiwan to anyone I like (maybe to an enemy), because I feel that I’m in high school, not university. These kids are so immature it’s unbelievable, like 13-year-old American kids. I’m sick to death of their constant yapping during class, I’m tired of the stupid group projects the teachers give us that are designed for children. I love what I’m learning, but I hate the environment. I miss the company of adults, so I try to befriend my teachers so I can have grown-up conversation once in a while.

Granted, every school is different, but I don’t know about the others, only Tamkang. My advice to you is “Run in the opposite direction and save your sanity!”

Iain, you know what I’m talking about! Why couldn’t I have been lucky enough to have gotten your English class?

Granted, each school is different. Problem is that, for instance, when I got here, teh attitude in most universities towards foreigners was “hell, no, we don’t want the mafan”. I remember clearly a friend who applied to X university, only to be told no foreigner had applied ther before and hence could not go there. :unamused: Lo and behold, 10 years later, they have 3 or 4 of his fellow country men and even women per year studying a very relevant subject to their nation, as it is taught in a college exclusively dedicated for this. Why? Because now the Taiwanese government encourages -meaning supports $$$- “internationalization” and “English taught courses”.

The problem is that many universities were not ready for the change, especially in attitude. Furthermore, they had to go from 0 to 150kms per hour in a year or two, hence, as we can see, most are still working out the kinks.

I can say that NCCU is ready, because they were on this boat before it became a trend. They are also a lot more open, have more courses available, and have set a higher standard. I’ve said it once and I say it again: NCCU is the second choice for top-graders, or as I call them, nerds with a life. These were the ones who took time off their studies for piano, Scouts, whatever, they are not just test-bots. True, NCCU is still constrained by the grills of paper-madness that bind the teaching staff, but it’s got good resources, human and otherwise.

It is OK to ask here as part of teh research, but ultimately, as I tell people “go, sit in a class and see for yourself whether you like it or not”. Do your homework, do your research. Don’t rely just in ranking. taste the food in the cafeteria, sniff around the library, cruise the grounds. It’s a long time to get a degree, and it will be even longer if you do not like the place.