Q: In recent years universities around the globe have been assiduously pursuing internationalization. But only about 1% of students in Taiwan are foreign, quite far behind Singapore's 15%. President Ma has been very anxious about this. Does the Ministry of Education have any new ideas?

A: In fact the MOE has always paid close attention to this issue, and our target is to have the percentage of foreign students reach 2.6% by 2012, and 10% by 2020.

For many years now, various agencies of the MOE, including the departments of Technical and Vocational Education and Higher Education, have been promoting recruitment of foreign students to come to Taiwan. When I was president of National Yunlin University of Science and Technology [2001-2009], we were commissioned by the MOE to take a delegation from technical and vocational schools to Malaysia and Vietnam to recruit students. Having visited more than 50 countries and exchanged views with many other school presidents, based on my overall experience everyone affirms that the quality of universities in Taiwan is very high, but they also say that there has never been enough promotion and initiative by the Taiwan side.

Right now schools are starting to become very active in this respect. One reason is the serious decline in birthrates in Taiwan, leaving many schools with plenty of fine teachers and facilities but no students. Meanwhile, in many countries in Southeast Asia the university entrance rate is only about 15%, but there is great demand for tertiary education, which is a gap we can fill.

Looking only at mainland China, each year 10 million students graduate from high school, but only 6 million can get into college or universities. The capacity of tertiary educational institutions in Taiwan is 320,000, so after subtracting 280,000 places for Taiwan's own students, there are still 40,000 openings.

Secondly, since joining the WTO and becoming a member of the global village, there has been a need to broaden the international perspective, whether in terms of recruitment of foreign talent by Taiwan corporations or domestic talent seeking employment overseas. Campuses are the primary focal point, where it is necessary to create bilingual "friendly campuses." But of course, the construction of a bilingual environment in the entire country is also very important.

Q: You just mentioned the figure 40,000. Are there really so many openings?

A: This is precisely a new policy that we are in the process of drafting-expanding the quota for foreign students. We hope to get it on the road by the next academic year.

In the past, to avoid squeezing out local students, there was an upper limit for foreign students, equal to 10% of the quota for domestic students, and added on top of the domestic quota, not cutting into it. Thus a university with a domestic student quota of 10,000 could have at most 1000 foreign students. But now not all Taiwanese universities can fill their domestic quotas, and there are more and more schools with a low matriculation rate. In the future we will relax restrictions so that schools can also use the number of places in their unfilled domestic quota to recruit foreign students. The MOE will create a mechanism that will allow each university to play to its strengths, so that new schools that are not very high in school ranking but have high academic achievement can recruit more foreign students.

Q: But the key to attracting foreign students is that there be classes taught in English. Won't this be difficult for many schools?

A: My suggestion is to use the "program" system more. There is more flexibility with offering programs [as opposed to confining course options to a particular department]. For example, a program in mechatronics can draw on courses from mechanical engineering, electronics, and so on. In any case, interdepartmental study is the current trend in academia, and in addition the program system makes it easier to bring into play more faculty from different departments who are capable of teaching in English.

Q: Should there also be more incentives?

A: Of course. The MOE provides large subsidies to schools that perform well in internationalization, and in recent years, now that schools each have their own campus fund, there has been more flexibility in making financial arrangements. Schools are therefore able to offer additional premiums to teachers capable of teaching in English, a reduction in the total number of hours they are required to teach, and the like.

In fact, faculty in Taiwan are extremely outstanding. When I was president at NYUST, 60% of our faculty had their masters' or doctorates from the US, 20% from Europe, and 10% from Japan, with 10% locally trained in Taiwan. This diversification of backgrounds is the soundest foundation for university internationalization. Of course, we also encourage schools to hire foreign-born faculty and do more faculty exchanges.

Q: There are those who say that university internationalization is not the same as "English-ization," and say that we should have selling points that are more unique to Taiwan, or perhaps more visionary policy objectives.

A: Very true. As I was just saying, we can use the "program" system to create programs that build on the particular strengths of Taiwan. For example, a program in "Mazu Culture" could draw on related courses in history, religion, arts, and anthropology, making it very useful to foreigners who want to research this area. But this requires someone to undertake systematic organization, and also promotional work so that outsiders will come to know about it.

Another example is that the development model of small enterprises in Taiwan provides many important lessons for others, and many students from third-world countries would like to research this. Also, people from the US or Europe who want to open companies in China can first come to Taiwan to study so-called "Asian management philosophy." These are all things that would be worth developing, but the schools have to have the determination and people are needed who can organize such programs.

Q: Finally, I would like to ask about the extent of opening to students from mainland China.

A: Our current policy with regard to mainland students coming to Taiwan is "three limits and six nots." The "three limits" are on the number of schools (41), the number of students (2000 per year), and the fields of study (with fields like national defense, medicine, and teaching not open). The "six nots" are that the government does not give scholarships to mainland students; mainland students are not given any special breaks on the entrance exams; the arrival of mainland students must not affect the number of students recruited domestically (thus the quota for mainland students is added to, not cut out from, the quota for local students); mainland students are not permitted to work while classes are in session (except for on-campus work-study jobs); they may not remain in Taiwan to work after graduation; and they may not sign up for civil service exams.

In order to get the legislation passed by this May, we had no choice but to adopt these restrictions. In order to avoid wasting scarce educational resources, in principle we encourage national universities to recruit their full quota of mainland MA and PhD students, as there are many very capable mainland students who can be of great value to teachers' research projects, and who can take back with them Taiwan's freedom and democracy, so in fact everyone should be glad to see this come to fruition.