Changing Times for Higher Education

To satisfy the public's desire for greater access to higher education and to reduce admissions pressures on middle- and high-school students, in 1994 the Ministry of Education (MOE) implemented one of the core demands of the 410 Educational Reform League--it began building more high schools and universities.

However, this transition from elite status to commonality has given rise to two problems that have yet to be resolved--there aren't enough resources to go around, and there are questions about how to divide the functions of Taiwan's higher education among schools.

Over the last ten years, the number of institutions of higher learning and the number of students pursuing higher education have increased by more than 200%. However, the resources devoted to higher education (including monies raised by the schools themselves) have only risen from 1.57% to 2% of GNP over the same period. On a per-school basis, resources are clearly insufficient.

According to Chou Chu-ying, a professor of education at National Chengchi University, the amount of money invested in each student pursuing higher education has fallen by one-third to one-half. Chou believes higher education in Taiwan is being commercialized, commodified, and stratified.

According to the MOE, annual per-student educational expenditures at public universities shrank from NT$229,577 in 1998 to NT$187,982 in 2002. Over the same period, per-student spending at private schools rose slightly, from NT$119,542 to NT$124,098.

When compared to schools in other nations, the shortfall in Taiwan's higher-education spending becomes still more apparent. Take Taiwan's most prestigious university, National Taiwan University (NTU), for example. In 2003, NTU spent NT$202,283 per student per year to educate its students, a figure well below the NT$246,619 spent by Korea's Seoul National University, and not even in the same ballpark with the University of California at Berkeley's NT$432,486, Harvard University's NT$847,831, and the University of Tokyo's NT$2.194 million.

This lack of resources is also reflected in student-faculty ratios. In 1994, the student-faculty ratio at Taiwan's public universities stood at 14.17:1. At Taiwan's private universities, it was 25.37:1. As of 2004, these ratios had worsened to 20.28:1 and 30.12:1, respectively.

An unbearable burden

Another problem is the structure of university funding.

According to Chen Der-hwa, director of the MOE's Department of Higher Education, 50% of university funding is provided by annual supplements from the MOE, 20% is covered by tuition and fees, and 30% derives from other sources, the bulk of which comes from government-supported research, with additions from fundraising and tuition from continuing education classes. At private schools, 65% of funding comes from tuition and fees, and 15% from government subsidies. Most of the remaining 20% is generated by government-sponsored research.

"Higher education relies too much on the government and students to pay its bills," says Chen. "Very little is paid by the public. This needs to change." In the US, for example, more than half of the funding for public universities in the US comes from government sources. However, there is a long tradition of private groups and philanthropists providing financial support to higher education. In 2004 alone, individuals in the US donated some US$24.4 billion to colleges and universities. Schools in the US also raise funds by partnering with industry and by patenting their own research.

The lack of resources for higher education in Taiwan has increased the burden on students and their families. Right now, tuition at a public university costs an average of NT$58,666 per academic year. At private schools, the figure is even higher--NT$107,483. These costs place a heavy burden on low-income families. In fact, some 700,000 of Taiwan's more than two million students in senior high school, senior vocational high school and higher education will have to rely on educational loans (totaling about NT$3 billion).

On the eve of Mother's Day, activists marched against the "commodification" of education." University students and professors, who were protesting the rising costs of higher education and the social inequities that have resulted, shouted slogans calling for conglomerates to pay taxes and for education to be free.

An uncertain role

Higher education isn't only suffering from a lack of resources. Another issue is that no one is certain anymore what its role is. Chen Der-hwa says that when higher education was reserved for Taiwan's elites, the number of university students was limited, the quality of education was high, and there was no need to create a division of labor between institutions. But the popularization of higher education has made such a division and differentiation necessary if resources are not to be wasted.

The historical development of universities in the West demonstrates a well-established trend towards splitting higher educational functions among different types of schools.

According to Associate Professor Wang Hsiou-huai of NTU's Center for Teacher Education, Western universities originally trained elites. In Britain, the mission of a university was to produce literate, cultivated intellectuals. On the European mainland, German universities focused on research, striving to discover and disseminate new knowledge.

But as access to higher education increased, the functions of these universities began to change. Instead of only serving to train elites for leadership roles, they began also to prepare the general public for careers. "By diversifying and developing new functions," says Wang. "they were able to proactively respond to the many different needs of individuals and society."

In the US, for example, by 1970 higher education was accessible to the masses. At the same time, schools began to take on distinctive roles as research-, teaching- or community-service-oriented institutions.

The rapid expansion of higher education in Taiwan in recent years has likewise brought it to the masses, and also brought the issue of splitting functions among universities to the fore. In 2003, an Executive Yuan committee on planning the expansion of higher education recommended that Taiwan's institutions of higher learning be divided into several types: research-oriented universities, teaching-oriented colleges and universities, vocationally-oriented colleges and universities, and community colleges. Research-oriented institutions mainly prepare students for academic research; teaching-oriented institutions seek to impart specialist knowledge and skills; while vocation-oriented institutions concentrate on vocational training.

Delaying separation

Educational tracking and the division of educational labor are handled differently in the US and Europe.

Wang says that in Germany, universities are institutions that provide needed training to students interested in doing in-depth research. Germany is able to do this because its education system begins tracking students at an early age-- young students are placed on their tracks after just four years of primary education. Those put on the Gymnasium track typically choose to go on to university. Students who are tracked into Realschule will later enter vocational/technical colleges where they receive practical technical training. Children who are tracked into Hauptschule go to work immediately on graduation.

The US educational system, on the other hand, delays tracking. Students remain untracked through secondary school, and, in some cases, even their university educations are focused on general education and basic training. As a result, students sometimes don't specialize until graduate school. Law and medicine are two obvious examples--in the US, students don't begin training in these fields until they have completed their baccalaureate.

In recent years, Taiwan has been utilizing the US's "delayed tracking" path. University functions are also being divided up in ways very similar to the US, and, especially, the California, model.

California's public university system is split into three tiers--the University of California system (which accepts the top one-eighth of the state's high-school students), the California State system (which accepts the top one-third) and the various community college systems (which are open to everyone)--each of which has its own functions. For example, only schools in the University of California system can establish doctoral programs. But each system has also established mechanisms that allow students to transfer easily to another.

However, the California model has proved difficult to implement in today's Taiwan.

Chen notes that the California system as a whole was established by legislative mandate, and its public universities were tiered right from the outset. In Taiwan, on the other hand, universities weren't established with explicit roles, leading to today's superabundance of schools and endless contention.

In addition, our two nations have very different cultures. In Taiwan, the deep-rooted notion of academic education as the route to well-paid government jobs means that research universities enjoy more resources and greater prestige. Consequently, every university hopes to become a research university, and none is willing to settle for a "lesser" role.

Taiwan's institutions of higher learning/ source: Department of Higher Education, Ministry of Education

Upgrading? Downgrading?

Predictably, in recent years, older and newly established universities, as well as vocational and technical colleges (which tend to lack qualified faculty and whose student body is a mixed bag), have all been establishing graduate schools in an effort to become research universities.

Tai Hsiou-hsia, dean of the College of Humanities and Social Sciences at National Chiao Tung University, says that as of now, the MOE has clear schema by which to type colleges and universities. Instead, it's a free-for-all with every school establishing PhD programs. Because there's no baseline for the designation of types, there has been a trend towards what Tai calls "academic shuffling."

This headlong rush by universities to establish graduate programs isn't just a consequence of traditional values; schools are also concerned about recruiting students.

Liang Chih-hsiung, head of the multimedia and game science department at Taoyuan's Lunghwa University of Science and Technology, says that though universities spend big bucks to establish graduate schools, they rarely attract enough graduate students to break even. However, the existence of a graduate program makes it easier to attract students to the undergraduate program. That's why graduate programs have proliferated in recent years.

According to the MOE, from 1995 to 2004, the number of master's programs in Taiwan grew from 656 to 2416. Over the same period, the number of students seeking master's degrees surged from 33,000 to 180,000, even outnumbering undergraduates in some schools, making master's programs the driving force in Taiwan's higher education system.

This has given rise to another problem--with students constantly seeking to advance to the next level of study, teachers are in chronically short supply.

According to the MOE, every graduate school faculty member currently mentors 5.7 graduate students. But at faculty-strapped private universities, it's not uncommon for a popular professor to have more than 20 graduate students. You can't help but wonder about the quality of graduate education in those circumstances. Some people even say that in Taiwan "university has become high school" and "graduate school has become university."

As universities have proliferated, the growing trend to establish master's programs has given rise to the saying that "university has become high school, and graduate school has become university," and has added more years to young people's educations.

Research vs pedagogy

With the rapid expansion of higher education and universities turning themselves into research institutions, already scarce educational resources are becoming scarcer still. Many scholars now worry that as a consequence higher education in Taiwan is becoming mediocre.

Research conducted in 2002 by Professor Fwu Bih-jen of NTU's Center for Teacher Education illustrates the division of labor among the US's 3116 institutions of higher learning--261 (8%) are research universities, 1215 (39%) are four-year colleges, and 1640 (53%) are community colleges offering two-year degrees. Each type of institution shows clear differences in its faculty, fees, and programs.

Fwu's study showed that tuition and fees at research universities are far higher than those at other institutions. These universities also have a larger proportion of their students studying in science and technology programs. Students at four-year colleges are more likely to major in the humanities, social sciences or business. Students at two-year colleges tend to major in the humanities, business, health, computer science, or vocational-technical programs. Research universities also far exceed the other types of institutions in terms of the level of education of their faculty, the amount of money spent on research, and the volume of research published.

According to Fwu, American institutions of higher learning have different functions, and, as a result, their standards differ. But in Taiwan, where institutions of higher learning are not clearly typed, there is little differentiation--tuition and fees, the way in which faculty are organized, and the classes faculty teach are all determined by the MOE.

While it isn't feasible to force differentiation among institutions of higher learning, resources are limited and must be allocated reasonably. If we seek to excel and to make our nation more competitive, schools have to establish a division of labor. The MOE is therefore currently using a number of mechanisms to entice schools into taking on alternative roles.

Chen says that diversification does not mean differentiating types of schools on the basis of their quality or how conscientiously they are run. But because their costs differ, each type of school naturally utilizes different amounts of resources. The MOE has therefore transformed the old egalitarian system by introducing competition into the allocation of resources and promoting a variety of awards.

Pursuing excellence

In 2000, the MOE began pushing its NT$13 billion Academic Excellence Development Program. The program targets key fields, and encourages universities to propose plans to propel their research into the top tier internationally.

From 2002 to 2004, the MOE spent NT$4.7 billion promoting its Research-Oriented University Integration Project. The project provided additional financial support to seven universities that were deemed to be internationally competitive--NTU, Tsing Hua, Chiao Tung, NCU, Yang Ming, Sun Yat-sen, and Cheng Kung--to encourage the kind of intramural and intermural integration that would expand and strengthen Taiwan's research-oriented universities.

Last year, the Executive Yuan placed its plan to develop top-tier universities and cutting-edge research centers atop its list of Ten New Major Infrastructure Projects. It proposed a budget of NT$50 billion over five years (2005-2009) to create a university that would rank first in Asia and in the top 100 in the world within ten years.

The plan has incited disputes on all sides, with many university presidents expressing displeasure at the idea of concentrating resources in the hands of a few large schools. Under attack from all sides, the government ultimately split NT$9.8 billion among 12 universities including NTU and Cheng Kung. But in so doing, it not only failed to meet its original goal of concentrating resources, but also upset the universities that hadn't been selected and raised doubts about its evaluation process.

In recent years, Taiwan's higher educational system has taken its cues from the US--delaying tracking of students, splitting university functions among different types of schools, etc. However, this approach is not without challenges. The photo shows Yale University in the US.

Theory vs practice

The MOE's objective is twofold: it is attempting to raise the international profile of Taiwan's research-oriented universities, while at the same time encouraging other schools to become more teaching-oriented and strive for educational excellence.

But this raises yet another problem: while it is relatively easy to measure the quality of research by looking at the number of papers published or patents received, measuring the quality of education is a far more difficult matter.

Last year, the MOE began promoting an educational excellence program that offers subsidies to help schools refine their approach to pedagogy. If the MOE approves a school's proposal, it pays 90% of its cost. The program paid out NT$1 billion to 13 schools last year, and is paying NT$5 billion this year. Over the program's three-year life, the MOE expects to provide subsidies totaling NT$15 billion to 30-40% of Taiwan's colleges and universities.

Whether research- or teaching-oriented, Taiwan's universities still operate on a value system that privileges "pure learning" over vocational education. This is posing a major difficulty to vocationally oriented colleges and universities.

The MOE originally planned to designate educational institutions (such as teacher training colleges) and technical/vocational schools (such as universities of technology or the arts) as vocationally oriented universities, but has had trouble reaching a consensus on the issue.

Technical/vocational schools face chronic difficulties finding faculty and appropriately orienting their curricula.

The problem stems in part from a lack of people with PhDs teaching in technical and professional fields. Because the MOE requires that heads of departments hold PhDs, departments are frequently led by someone with a PhD in a different field. The curricula are typically a hodge-podge, theory and practice are not given equal attention, schools find it difficult to recruit better students, and curricula often don't meet the needs of the job market.

"What to do about vocational/technical education in Taiwan is a really big issue," says NTU's Wang Hsiou-huai. She says that you used to be able to go to work straight out of a vocational high school. Now, however, students who aren't really university material have to sit through four years of college and a theory-oriented curriculum that doesn't really suit them. And professors with PhDs find it difficult to teach these students how to actually put their knowledge to use. "They spend all day struggling with students who have no interest in class," says Wang. "It's really tough."

"Is there any need," she wonders, "for the majority of students to study for four more years? Isn't it a waste of both teachers' and students' precious time?"

Stanley Yen, president of the Landis Hotels and Resorts group, once remarked that a good chef who lays down his knives to write papers and study ingredients is neither applying his talents nor acting in keeping with his character.

Preparing for closures

Given that resources for higher education are limited, that higher-educational functions are being divided among different types of schools, that birthrates are falling, and that the pool of students is shrinking, it is inevitable that some schools will eventually fail.

Can universities be closed?

"Of course they can!" exclaims Chen Der-hwa. He says that when the University Act and the Private School Act were revised last year, the MOE was very concerned with establishing viable exit mechanisms, such as allowing mergers or transforming schools into public facilities catering to our aging society.

Given the recent developments in higher education in Taiwan, it's a safe bet that we are going to be looking for the right mix of reforms for some time to come. After all, though facilities can be quickly built, creating a sound, comprehensive university system and a healthy academic culture takes time and effort. The spread of university education to the public at large is just the beginning.