Better to continue school than get a job?
With employment opportunities decreasing, more and more students are choosing to continue their education. For example, Chen Chong-en points out that in the past 100% of Yu Da grads went straight into the workforce as bookkeepers, assistants sales staff, telephone operators, data entry operatives, secretaries, caregivers, and so on. Today the number who are choosing to continue their education has risen dramatically. In 1992 some Yu Da 190 students who went on to higher education, while last year the number had climbed to over 1800-an increase from only 8% to 75%.
In addition to technical and vocational students continuing on in education in large numbers and thus leading to the withering away of the "inherently" inferior "second track," the lack of official expenditures in this area have amounted to "kicking a man when he is down," and the gap between the two national educational "tracks" has widened significantly.
Tien Chen-jung points out that although the technical and vocational is the "second" track, expenditures and opportunities in this area fall far behind those of the "first" track. He argues that, logically, the government should offer more assistance and better treatment to those students with limited academic ability and who come from a lower socio-economic background. However, for many years the top-notch public senior high schools have been the domain of the children of well-heeled families, while the less advantaged students have been "selected" into private vocational schools that charge higher tuition fees but attract less able teaching staff.
The mechanisms for continuing on in education are also not fair to technical and vocational students. Logically, after students are streamed into the vocational educational system, the future path to higher education should not be determined on the basis of general subjects. "But whether they want to become nurses or civil engineering technicians, and whether they are applying to a technical college or a technical university, in the exams they are tested in Chinese, English and math," says Tien. "There is no emphasis on professional abilities at all."
Professor Tseng Hsien-cheng of the Department of Chemical Engineering at National Hsinchu Teachers' College replies that if basic knowledge like Chinese, English and math is lacking, this will affect a student's ability to acquire new knowledge in the future. "Given the speed with which science and technology are developing and changing today, high-tech personnel must have the flexibility to meet changing circumstances and to enable them to acquire new knowledge and adapt new technology to solve problems," Tseng argues. "For this reason, we should raise the students' abilities in basic coursework at the vocational high school level and not just have them learn specialized techniques that will be soon outmoded."
No takers for work-study programs
Everyone has his own opinion on the wisdom of separating students into academic and technical streams in secondary education, but the market itself has a method of natural selection. A lack of market demand will eliminate one or the other approach. The vocational high schools themselves have experienced the natural rise and fall of particular courses. Professor Huang You-min of the Department of Mechanical Engineering at National Taiwan University of Science and Technology points out that the lathe is an excellent example. Because industry now exclusively uses computer-controlled lathes, men are no longer employed for this purpose and so the course on lathes at the University has been eliminated.
By contrast, because there are some traditional vocational skills for which there will always be a demand, there is no fear they will ever be "selected out." Wu Jung-feng, a section chief in the Office of the Ministry of Education in Central Taiwan, says there will always be a need for some professions like auto mechanic, glazier or beautician, because they cannot be mechanized. "For these jobs, National Taiwan University Science and Technology graduates are not necessary, vocational high school grads can handle them," he says.
Nevertheless, an increasing number of vocational high school grads are choosing to continue their education rather than seek employment. As a result, companies that in the past participated in work-study programs with vocational high schools now have no takers.
Wu Jung-feng notes the imbalance in supply and demand between vocational high schools and the industrial workforce is steadily worsening. "Some traditional industries still want to hire vocational high school grads but schools, students and interest are all lacking," Wu says. By way of example, he says that recently the metal foundries association enquired through the MOE's central Taiwan office to find vocational high schools with metal casting courses for possible work-study programs. But because the students were all intent upon continuing their education and the schools themselves showed no interest, they had to drop the idea.
Lin Chin-chu, a senior specialist at the office, points out that currently only work-study programs for catering and beautician course students are easily promoted. On the one hand, industry demand is high, and on the other hand students can study on the job. This is an excellent model for a win-win cooperative program.
In technology-based industries, such as electronics, products are driven by time-efficient production and most of this production is automated. As a result, students are rather limited in the skills they can learn on the job, so opportunities for work-study programs here are few.
Comprehensive senior highs-losing out at both ends?
In order to solve the problem of vocational high schools the Ministry of Education in 1966 began to advise vocational high schools to transform themselves into "comprehensive senior high schools" and has provided subsidies of NT$5-6 million a year to these experimental schools.
A comprehensive senior high school carries out a policy of "first year-foundation building, second year-exploration, third year-specialization," by which students study basic skills in the first year and only begin to study specialist subjects in the second year. Some people say straight out that the comprehensive high school can only attract students of middling ability. Requiring these students to study with a dual orientation and to "explore" multiple areas causes them to fall even further behind their senior high school counterparts in the general curriculum. Added to this, they are not as good as vocational high school students in technical subjects-so they end up "losing out at both ends."
By academic year 2002, the number of vocational schools had dropped from 203 down to 107. Adding the 36 comprehensive senior high schools that had been transformed from vocational high schools, there were a total of 143. Yu Da, with a history going back 54 years, began to transform three years ago. Vice-Principal Chen Chong-en notes that although the comprehensive senior high schools represent the mainstream of secondary education for the future, recruiting students is difficult. Last year Yu Da estimated an intake of eight classes but in the end it was able to recruit only four.
The Ministry of Education, moreover, is planning to establish a selection mechanism. Lin Teng-chiao notes that education in Taiwan has become a buyer's market, in which everything is oriented toward satisfying students' demands, leaving schools with very little scope for development. In the past, private schools in Taiwan were not able to close down willy-nilly. They had to be "donated" to the local county or municipal government or another educational entity. In line with the trend toward allowing free-market pressures to influence the school system, Lin Teng-chiao says, a law on private schools should be written as soon possible to set up a fair and reasonable "exit mechanism," allowing private schools to have some room for mergers or for going out of business.
Key to success-specialization
Those vocational high schools that remain will become more specialized. "They must have a unique quality to remain of value," says Lin Peng-chiao.
The Ministry of Education plans call for the current seven types of vocational high schools with their 70 different courses to develop in different directions. Navigation and nursing courses, for example, will be raised to the technical college level, equivalent to higher education. Some industry sectors will be adjusted to the post-technical college level, commerce and home economics will primarily train people for the service industry, and responding to Taiwan's entry into WTO, agricultural studies will develop in the direction of specialized agricultural education.
"The biggest problem for the technological and vocational fields is the mindless expansion of numbers," says Chang Tien-fu, chairman of National Chi Nan University's Educational Policy and Administration Department. Chang points out that in the past technological and vocational schools easily attracted tens of thousands of people, but no thought was given to the ability of the labor market to absorb their output. In the future, we should follow a policy of "picked troops," a policy of selective specialization, in other words. This is the key for the success of technological and vocational education.
Twelve years ago Kai Ping Senior High School created a food and beverage department and followed a "specialization" policy. Principal Hsia Hui-wen says he worked hard to set up "food-and-beverage humanities" courses to raise the department's profile. In the new curriculum are courses such as "master of kitchen arts" (a chef and expert on the ins-and-outs of the kitchen itself) and "food consultant" (who advises customers on dishes and attends to the dining area of a restaurant). In addition, he introduced the German concept of "sandwich teaching," according to which students first study theory and general education at school then go out into the industry for on-the-job polishing of technical skills and verification of what was learned in theory.
The economy is not the goal of education
Chang Tien-fu argues that given the speed of industrial change today, the future is uncertain and everyone is looking for answers. People go wherever there is profit. The same applies to training talent. Everyone is looking for the right direction. Faced with such a situation, an education system that behaves like an old ox dragging its feet is unable to meet the challenges of changing circumstances. "We must meet industrial change with flexibility," Chang says.
"Economic development is not the object of education," says Chu Ching-i, a researcher at Academia Sinica. "The object of education is people, and the benefits of education are not just the achievement of a perfect match between supply and demand in the job market." In any case, the labor market has its own regulating mechanisms, so one doesn't have to worry about it too much. When there is a lack of labor in some particular technical sector and supply does not meet demand, the "market" will naturally see this and will attract more students to this particular technical area. In a year or so supply and demand will adjust themselves.
Chu Ching-i notes that Amartya Sen, the 1998 Nobel laureate in economics, once said that "the object of economic development is to realize and to protect freedom." What then is the object of education? This is a topic worth thinking about for all of us... and perhaps it is the answer to all our questions.