Ho Ming-sho, born in 1973, is the youngest associate professor at Nanhua University in Chiayi. He was the first person studying sociology in Taiwan to get a special promotion to a doctoral program without having to complete his MA, and he completed his doctorate at National Taiwan University in only five years.

A graduate of the department of foreign languages at NTU, Ho says that it was the tradition for NTU students to pursue their graduate studies abroad. When he got his BA in 1995, he also thought about going abroad, but didn't take any concrete action, and anyway had already passed the exam to enter the graduate institute of sociology at NTU. Having been through the 1990s student movement, he was very interested in social and student activism, and at that time sociology was a very popular field of study, so he put his head down and plowed straight forward.

With regard to the fact that currently most students are electing to stay in Taiwan to pursue graduate studies, Ho believes that the main consideration is economic. Tuition at American schools is increasing year after year. Even just applying is intimidatingly costly.

Lots of competition

Generally speaking, if you go to the US to study sociology, it takes perhaps six or seven years to get a PhD. By studying in Taiwan, you enjoy the advantages of lower tuition and a strict time limit on the number of years allowed for your program. However, how does a local degree stack up against a degree earned abroad? How does the "return on investment" compare for a local program as opposed to studying overseas? These are perhaps the questions being considered by today's would-be scholars.

Some people would say that by studying in Taiwan you can build up personal and professional relationships with local professors, so it will be easier to find a job after graduation. But, says Ho Ming-sho, "If you want to teach, it's still better to have a degree from overseas. Many people still think that overseas degrees are better than local degrees. Anyway, just because you study overseas and are far away doesn't mean that it is impossible to make the necessary personal connections." He often sees PhD candidates who have gone abroad to study in the US coming back at their own expense to participate in academic conferences, where they hand out their name cards. Relying only on this and their foreign degrees they can get interviews for jobs.

But people who do the hiring tell a different story. "Fifteen years ago, even schools like NTU, Tsing Hua University, and Chiaotung University couldn't find enough faculty, and there was huge demand. But people earning their PhDs even five years after that found that it was difficult to get a teaching position in a nationally funded university. Now the competition is even more intense," says Tang Chuan-yi, chairman of the Department of Computer Science at Tsing Hua. Last year there were openings for four teachers in his department, and more than 40 persons with both domestic and foreign degrees applied, and so the department could really be selective. In the end, two individuals were hired because they also had experience in high-tech industry, while the other two were selected based on the fact that the department was looking specifically for people with their areas of specialization. In fact, whether their degrees were from domestic or foreign universities was not the most important consideration.

Tang, who graduated from the department of computer science at Tsing Hua in 1980, decided to stay in Taiwan after college because he is an only son and thought he should not move too far away from his parents. After getting a doctorate in computer engineering from Chiaotung University, he began teaching at Tsing Hua. There were more than 40 people in his graduating class from university, but only a minority stayed in Taiwan to continue their studies as he did.

Widening the bottleneck

Over the last 20 years, the biggest change in higher education in Taiwan has been precisely that the proportion of students electing to pursue advanced studies in-country has gone from being the minority to the majority.

One reason is that there are many more opportunities to study in Taiwan now. In 1976, there were only 25 universities in Taiwan, with about 4400 or so graduate students; and even by 1987, there were only three additional universities. After the lifting of martial law in that year, however, citizens groups began calling for the liberalization of university policy. In response, the "education superhighway" policy was put in place, upgrading numerous technical colleges into institutes, and institutes into full universities, with the consequent opening of graduate programs at these newly upgraded schools. (In Taiwan, the types of courses and programs a school may offer are limited by Ministry of Education policy, depending on the status of the school; only by upgrading their rank could these schools offer grad programs.)

By 1991, the number of colleges and universities had increased to 50, with more than 26,000 graduate students. By 2001, there were nearly three times as many institutes of higher education (135), and more than 100,000 graduate students. The increase in graduate students has been especially astonishing in the last three years, averaging 23% per annum.

Moreover, comprehensive universities like NTU and National Chengchi University have decided to reduce recruitment of undergraduates while taking more graduates, in order to raise the quality of research; this is another reason for the increase in graduate students. For example, when NTU's College of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science was established in 1997, it had only one undergraduate program and four graduate programs (later modified to two and five, respectively). Currently it has more graduate students (750 MA candidates and 437 PhD candidates) than undergraduates (1032).

The ladder up

Besides the increase in channels for pursuing advanced education, having at least an MA degree has become a near-necessity in pursuing employment. Within the last ten years, the number of university students in Taiwan has increased dramatically, from 250,000-plus in 1991 to more than 670,000 in 2001, and a university degree is now common. With so many university grads out there, and a rising rate of unemployment in the economy as a whole, finding a job is not easy. Many students feel that rather than just sitting at home loafing around they might as well continue their studies and increase their competitiveness in the job market.

"It's not enough just to have a BA. It's more competitive to have an MA, because it indicates an ability to resolve problems independently," says Tang Chuan-yi. Most students are aware of this trend. Taking Tang's department of computer science for example, out of 100 students who graduate every year, about 80% elect to continue with advanced studies. And when this summer Sinorama was hiring a new English editor, over half of the 40 applicants-an unprecedented ratio-had MA degrees.

A survey conducted by the office of employment services for graduates of NTU indicates that only 20% of NTU seniors intend to find a job immediately after graduation. Sixty-six percent hope to continue with further study, with most preferring to stay in Taiwan. At National Sun Yat-sen University (NSYSU), less than 20% of students facing imminent graduation want to enter the job market; an astounding 80% are preparing for the examinations for graduate school.

The ambition for ever-higher educational credentials that pervades Taiwan society has led to an ever-increasing number of people signing up for MA course entrance examinations. More than 13,500 students signed up for the MA exams at NSYSU, 3600 more than the previous year and a new record. The acceptance rate in the most popular programs-such as electrical engineering, business administration, and information management-was very low.

The same thing applies at Cheng Kung University. This year the school's 60 graduate programs recruited students for 2138 openings; more than 16,000 people took the entrance exam, hundreds more than the previous year. Meanwhile, over at Tamkang University, more than 10,000 people took the exams for graduate programs. The most popular was the MA in finance, with 1109 hopefuls competing for 30 places.

Winners and losers

Of course, while tens of thousands of students are trying to crowd through the graduate school gateway, there are great differences in the popularity of various departments. Dozens of people compete for each spot in programs like business administration and electrical engineering, while the less attractive fields of study may not even be able to recruit their full quota. Over the last two years, the number of students taking the exams for graduate programs in the humanities and social sciences has not even been up to the number of available positions. Everywhere you can see how the employment market is driving graduate studies, which is somewhat worrying.

Three years ago, the graduate institute of sociology at Tunghai University set out to recruit 15 grad students; only three people ended up enrolling, making it almost impossible to even keep the course open. Last year Fokuang University expected to recruit 15 students to its graduate program in religion; 12 people applied, ten were accepted, and only four enrolled.

Nonetheless, the larger trend is clear: Here in the new millennium, when a university diploma is a minimum requirement, more and more people want advanced degrees. And, increasingly, Taiwanese feel that if you only want to study for an MA, the training you'll receive at a graduate school in Taiwan is not necessarily inferior to that overseas; it depends on what you want to learn.

Comparing the advantages and disadvantages of studying home and abroad, Ho Ming-sho avers: "If you go abroad you can learn a different theoretical perspective, and the faculty is probably superior to Taiwan. But if you want to study local subjects, it's much easier to find material in Taiwan." And Tang Chuan-yi says: "As far as the information field is concerned, there is no significant difference between the research basis for algorithms in Taiwan and overseas. But if you are talking about supercomputers, Taiwan perhaps has less experience in this area."

It also depends on which school you attend. For example, NTU is considered one of the best schools in Asia, having been ranked number seven in a survey by Yazhou Zhoukan. Chen Tien-chih, a professor of economics at NTU, agrees that a local MA degree is not inferior to one from the US. He says that NTU would probably be ranked among the top 40 schools in the States in terms of graduate study, and students produced by its MA programs would, in terms of their intellectual quality and professional ability, be up to standard, lagging behind only in English ability.

However, Chen is less willing to draw this conclusion for doctoral programs. "A top-20 school in the States would have a large number of top researchers and scholars to train doctoral candidates, but the second-rank schools, say the top 40, might only have a few professors who are especially outstanding in some particular fields. This is to say, if there is not a large enough group of world-class professors, then the training that doctoral students receive will be correspondingly limited," says Chen.

NTU's problems are duplicated elsewhere. A teacher at Shih Hsin University points out that three years ago the school was considering offering doctoral programs. But seeing as the entire school only has three full professors, the faculty is clearly insufficient.

Quantity vs. quality

Private universities in Taiwan are especially short of resources and quality varies greatly. This is one of the main concerns of higher education in Taiwan. "Graduate programs in private universities will be the next crisis in higher education. It is very possible that some graduate schools and private universities will be unable to even recruit enough students to stay open," said former minister of education Wu Jin at a meeting of members of the Academia Sinica. Wu stated that although a huge number of students in Taiwan want to study, the problem is that every school in Taiwan now runs graduate programs, and more and more students are thinking of going to mainland China to study, so everyone is struggling for their share of students.

The Ministry of Education's University Education Policy White Paper points out that there has been a loss of balance between quantity and quality in tertiary education. There has been a rapid increase in the number of private schools, graduate institutes, and technical universities. As a result teachers are stretched too thin, and they can provide only limited guidance to students. On average, the teacher-student ratio at a state-run school is 1:14, while it is 1:25 at a private university. Naturally these schools are having a hard time competing to attracting grad students.

"Private universities have virtually no standard of academic quality to speak of. Most professors have no time to do research, and many of them hold down posts at more than one school. The schools are constantly offering more courses in continuing education [i.e. non-degree programs for the general public] in order to make money, so the teachers are exhausted, and they cannot give much guidance to students," says a graduate student at one such university.

Defining status

Wu Tsung-sheng, a doctoral candidate in sociology at Tunghai University, who pays particularly close attention to the current situation in higher education, says that originally recruitment for both students and faculty for technical schools was on a completely different track from that for universities. But now that the technical schools have been upgraded to universities, they can offer more courses, so they need more teachers. Moreover, standards for hiring faculty are stricter for universities, so the new universities must compete head-to-head with the more established existing universities for faculty. The same thing applies to recruitment of students.

Their future is still uncertain. "These three years will be the critical life-and-death period for private schools," says Wu Tsung-sheng. New universities that have emerged from the technical and professional system are doing everything they can to advance on those areas on which they will be judged, such as campus grounds, library holdings, facilities, and teacher-student ratio. If they cannot succeed in maintaining standards and attracting enough students, certain programs may be closed down.

Frank Shu, the president of Tsing Hua University, who formerly taught at the University of California at Berkeley, says that the status of universities in Taiwan is not as clear as in the United States. Taking the California system for example, there are about the same number of universities as there are in Taiwan, but these are clearly divided into nine research-oriented universities and 20 or so state-run universities, plus 120 or so community colleges. Each of the three types of schools has its own mission. Research oriented schools undertake cutting-edge research. The state-run universities focus on developing general manpower, and therefore do not have doctoral programs. Finally, the two-year community colleges provide a channel for high school graduates to engage in further study. Looking to the long term, Taiwan should also move in this direction, with each school finding its own role. Only if the education market is clearly differentiated can students clearly choose.

You might still remember that a few years ago people were very worried about the high rate of unemployment among persons with high-end educational credentials. Today unemployment is striking every occupation and status. While the economy is good, many students can rely on financial support from their parents to go abroad to study or take a learning holiday and see the world. While the economy looks bad, if you want to study, there's nothing wrong with choosing to stay in the country to further your education. Anyway, no matter whether your goal is to recharge your batteries, learn a second professional skill, or find a port in the storm far removed from the employment market, the halls of learning are certainly not the final stop in life.

Huang Kuo-chih

(interview by Teng Sue-feng/ tr. by David Mayer)

Thirty-five-year-old Huang Kuo-chih holds a bachelor's degree in chemistry from Soochow University and a master's in chemistry from Tamkang University, and four years ago he obtained a doctorate from National Taiwan Normal University. Today he works as a systems engineer at Nan Ya Technology Corporation. In Huang's opinion, a master's degree has become a basic necessity for students majoring in science or engineering.

When I finished my bachelor's degree ten years ago, Soochow University didn't offer a master's degree in chemistry, so I took the entrance exams for National Sun Yat-sen University, National Cheng Kung University, National Tsing Hua University, and Tamkang University. I only passed the test for Tamkang. Tamkang is just a private university, but chemistry is one of their main emphases. The instruments and facilities there are very new, and the faculty is very strong, with more than 20 professors. It took me two and a half years to finish my master's degree, after which I decided to go on for a PhD. I took the entrance exams for Cheng Kung, Taiwan University, National Taiwan Normal University, and Tamkang, and passed the tests for Taiwan Normal and Cheng Kung. I decided on Taiwan Normal because I figured I could take some education courses and have the option of becoming a teacher if nothing else worked out. Besides, Cheng Kung is all the way down in Tainan and I wanted to put down roots up north.

As a grad student, the type of training you get is totally up to your advisor. I spent almost all four years during my PhD program in the lab. Besides completing all the academic requirements for a doctorate, PhD candidates in science and engineering also have to publish two articles in well-known international journals before they can graduate. That's a really tough requirement.

I started working after I got out of the military two years ago. The competition for teaching jobs was fierce, and I wasn't really all that interested in teaching anyway, so I decided to look for something in industry. I interviewed with about ten companies, and they all asked the same question: "Since you graduated from Taiwan Normal, why don't you become a teacher?" Most companies think that they have to pay a higher salary to someone with a PhD, and that a PhD is a bit overqualified. I think that I got hired on account of the fact that I'm good with detailed work, and I'm a serious sort of person.

The advantage of doing grad school in Taiwan is that you're more familiar with the lay of the land, so to speak. You know which teacher's research emphasis coincides with your own interests. There were over 40 others in my graduating class at Tamkang who got their bachelor's degrees in chemistry, and over half of them now have master's degrees. It was already becoming the trend five years ago for people to go on to grad school, and now a master's degree has almost become a basic necessity.

For science and engineering students who want to work in industry, a PhD is not so important. My doctoral dissertation, for example, was on "organic metal compounds containing main group elements," which is almost totally unrelated to what I do now. But grad school emphasizes training in logic and methodology, which is very useful. Academia and industry both need creative people who are capable of solving problems. When you study more, you yourself benefit more than anyone.

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In recent years there has been a sharp increase in the number of universities in Taiwan, with a corresponding increase in graduate programs. But state-run schools still have far more resources than most private universities, yet the roles of different schools are poorly differentiated. The photo shows the library at National Taiwan University.

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With so many students trying to get into the most popular grad school programs now, many of the cram schools on Nanyang Street that used to specialize in training students to take the university entrance exams have "been promoted," and now cater to those taking graduate school entrance exams. The photo was taken on Nanyang Street the day grad school exam results were posted.

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There are no age limits for MA and PhD programs; anyone can pursue an advanced degree. "Lifetime education" is becoming the norm in Taiwan.

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One advantage of staying in Taiwan to go to graduate school is the strict time limit for finishing a degree. Another is the chance to build up personal and professional relationships with local professors.

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When the economy is good, campuses are places to recharge your batteries and absorb new knowledge. During downturns, campuses provide a port in which to escape the storm.

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(courtesy of Huang Kuo-chih)