I still say bums in seats
Flawed though it is, the university entrance exams are more egalitarian than many countries.
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Lol, yes, they were all people that had some relation to education in Taiwan, so I will assume Ed departments of their respective universities. If you’re a professor of education in a country that plans on being “bilingual” in sevenish years, but you can’t even deliver a speech in the target language, what does that tell the future teachers of “English language” education? (I’ll answer that: it tells them that no matter how good or bad your English is, you can still get a job in education, educating people about English education while you yourself are clearly a failed product of the system you promote)
Meanwhile, in America…
Seriously though, education is quite literally unaffordable to the average person who didn’t get a nice bit of help from previous family generations anywhere in the world that it’s not fully subsidized by the government. One of the many ways socialism and communism are very different things (look at the quality of life, happiness, and educational outcomes in Norway compared to the PRC). And capitalism? Lol, that’s Taiwan and the US education systems for you. Works only for those who have the wealth or are crazy enough to take out the loans to pay for it.
And what they need is a Canadian Che to turn them into Marxists. 
Yeah but I currently work for the public school system in Taiwan as part of the new bilingual program. Many public high schools (surprisingly in Taipei) don’t actually offer bilingual education at all and have never had a foreign teacher at all before. So I already knew the state of public education regarding English is poor (I’d say on par with the American Spanish programs) . I should point out that at the actual high schools, at least in Taipei, there a genuine openness and desire to improve education.
I hope that things will be a lot different in the political science department especially since the program I’m going into is focused on diplomacy (international doctoral program in Asian studies).
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Agreed. And let’s not ignore the fact that many students who achieve poor scores but have wealthy parents are obliged to attend private junior and senior high schools rather than some hellhole public school; I’ve had many students like this, and those schools charge a lot more than poorer parents of similarly poor-performing students will shell out for the private universities.
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yea, not every single peasant here needs a degree… besides, the entire population nearly has a degree, thus making them not special and many of them useless. A lot of people could make more money being scooter repairmen, electricians, farmers, or other blue collar work rather than bottom level electrical engineers.
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Michael Turton talked about this around 20 years ago… he predicted back then it would be 5-10 years for a massive shake out to happen… he was right, but predicted it too soon.
Although it may seem grim, there are actually a lot of opportunities for foreign teachers as many schools will need to hire foreigners to appear attractive when trying to get students. I saw the same thing happen at public schools 10 years ago when I first came to Tawan. The demographic timebomb has finaly caught up to unis. However, foreign teachers are mostly used as a gimmick to attract students and most schools are really clueless as how to properly utilize foreign teachers.
Some schools will almost certainly close, while other could consolidate, as is what has happened in Japan. We’ll probably see some combination of this in the upcoming years.
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We already are
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Society tells them that they need a worthless degree even if it’s from a worthless school, then when they graduate nobody will hire them because it’s a worthless degree and they end up at 711 for $150 an hour. Not to mention hiring managers only hiring people from their top schools for all the plum jobs.
You’re right that they would be better off not wasting 4 years of their life and all that money for a crappy paper that nobody will accept anyway.
Absolutely… and the 4 years at university would be a huge opportunity cost to boot.
There was another thread that I was reading recently, it had some posts from 4 years back but has become active again, someone was saying back in 2018 that Taiwanese high school kids realized that they could make more money in China. How the times can change so quickly… I am now asking my Taiwanese university students what they think about going to China… keep in mind that these would have been the same high school kids back in 2018. They don’t want to go. They realize now that they will be used… chewed up and spit out after a few years, five at most. They will take what they want/need from them and then send them on their way. Plus things in China have gotten a lot worse. It’s no longer the “take your salary in NT and put it in RMB” like before… which was about a 5 times difference. They know the shelf life is limited and China is on the decline plus all of their draconian rules make it a much less attractive place to go. A major process of reshoring is happening for many international companies, including ones from Taiwan and the US.
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The Control Yuan speaks out on the conditions facing faculty and other staff at private universities:
Taipei Times, July 17, 2022 page 2
BIRTHRATE FACTOR: Officials said that it was entirely foreseeable that 30 percent of private institutions would have registrations at unsustainable levels in the next decade
- By Wu Su-wei and Jonathan Chin
Summary
The Ministry of Education failed to protect the labor rights of educators at private colleges and universities, the Control Yuan said on Thursday as it issued corrective measures against the ministry.
Chronic neglect of the working conditions at private institutions of higher learning by the ministry deprived faculty members of their right to fair working conditions, Control Yuan members Lai Ting-ming (賴鼎銘) and Wang Mei-yu (王美玉) said in a news release.
Such rights are guaranteed by the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, which the legislature ratified in 2001, Lai and Wang said.
Taiwan’s aging population has triggered an existential crisis for private colleges and universities, with student enrollments falling steeply every year, the members said, adding that a registration rate of less than 60 percent was reported at seven institutions last year.
Thirty percent of private colleges and universities are expected to have registrations at unsustainable levels in the next decade, they said, adding that the situation was entirely foreseeable.
In response to financial pressures, administrators at some private education institutions drove down costs with unfair practices, including by withholding salaries, paying less than the minimum wage and firing teachers en masse, they said.
Additionally, some institutions contractually obliged faculty to work a set number of hours and take on administrative tasks without compensation, or linked performance reviews to registration numbers, they said.
The ministry was called upon to handle wage disputes 14 times in the past five years, but the performance of the officials involved was unsatisfactory, as they typically neglected to bring cases to arbitration and did not investigate claims of wrongdoing, Lai and Wang said.
For example, the southern satellite campus of a private institution reportedly paid NT$28 per hour of overtime and compensated interns NT$15.2 per hour, they said.
The current minimum hourly wage in Taiwan is NT$168.
Education officials should not have allowed the situation and they ignored the issue, resulting in numerous lawsuits that negatively affected the quality of education at the institute, the members said.
Privately owned institutions of higher education have laid off 166 faculty members while reporting the resignation of 1,595 teachers over the past three years, Lai and Wang said.
The ministry last year established a voluntary program for private institutions to provide faculty severance packages, but only seven institutions volunteered, they said.
Faculty members at private institutions have experienced infringements on their personal dignity, professional image, and labor and human rights as a result of the ministry’s passivity, which must be urgently addressed, the Control Yuan members said.
In addition, regulations should be established to protect the employees of dissolved private institutions, they said.
Additional reporting by CNA
Source: Control Yuan censures education ministry - Taipei Times
Guy
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Circus maximus, as long as labour continues to be categorised arbitrarily (e.g. govt workers, migrant workers, foreign teachers etc) with differing protection mechanisms. Such a patchwork approach only works to further a divide and rule agenda.
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I don’t disagree with the last sentiment. But where on this planet have you found a place without some forms of labour market segmentation?
Incidentally, the folks getting turfed from their jobs as lecturers cut across the so-called “full-time” / “part-time” divide, which is arguably the most salient division of labour in universities in Taiwan and beyond.
Guy
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At least they don’t have to worry about health insurance in TW. Being a lecturer in the US is pretty much guaranteed to qualify you for food stamps while each individual student has forked over at least US$100 to the university for each and every hour of your lectures, whether they sit through them or not…
Is this a bad thing? Like many developed countries, the value of most university degrees have fallen with horrible ROIs. Its better for everyone these departments get cut and schools at the bottom of the list go out of business. They provide no real value anymore.
There are so many pathways in careers that do not require university degrees.
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I guess one could say it is culling the herd.
Unfortunately real people (lecturers and students and staff) get turfed out, which sucks, as they were not the ones who set up this system so foolishly.
Guy
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I guess my bitching is more on the arbitrary nature of the categorisation in the pursuit of control rather than for ease of execution.
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