Changing the curriculum
Having followed the issue of youth employment over many years, Lio Mon-chi, dean of academic affairs at National Sun Yat-sen University, says that students in Taiwan suffer almost universally from “late maturity” in thinking about their careers. The result is that “unsatisfying employment” is even more of a problem than “unemployment.”
While a lot of students are ill prepared for their own futures as a result of parents pushing them in directions they are not enthusiastic about, or simply because there are fewer good choices during an economic downturn, the students are also victims of stultified curricula.
The argument over whether institutions of higher education should be “halls of knowledge” or “professional training schools” has been going on for a long time, says Lio, but in fact higher education can incorporate both industry and academics. There is no need for a zero-sum struggle between “a broad liberal education” and “technical education.” For the moment, the most urgent task in closing the “industry” vs. “academia” gap is curriculum design, with the aim being to find an equilibrium point between book knowledge and practical skills.
Lio says that a lot can be learned from the AQF, the “Qualifications Framework” designed by the Australian government. In addition to the basics, the curriculum incorporates recommendations from national-level industrial unions, giving students the option of taking eight to 10 courses linked to industry development during their four years of university. The curriculum is reviewed and revised every three years to ensure that it remains up to date on changes in industry.
Of course universities in Taiwan have by no means failed to notice the transformation of our industrial structure and society. For example, schools like Feng Chia University and National Sun Yat-sen University have started asking students to do special projects—such as an extended report or an internship—that will demonstrate the practical skills that they have learned during their four years in school.
In order to maximize employability of young people, businesses, schools, and students themselves will have to all work together. During the current stage, when things are changing but nobody really knows for sure what will happen next, one thing is nonetheless certain: students are the decision-makers for their own futures. As they contemplate eventually entering a highly competitive job market, a growing number of students are preparing earlier, accumulating experience, and testing themselves. Only in this way will they be able to shine as brightly as possible in the next stage in life.
An Alternative to Backpacking: AIESEC Helps Youngsters Gain Overseas InternshipsThe International Association of Students in Economic and Commercial Sciences (AIESEC), founded by European students in 1948, now boasts 86,000 members from 117 countries and territories. Each year AIESEC offers nearly 10,000 overseas professional internship opportunities in the fields of business administration, education, and technology—including positions with such renowned corporations as IBM and Oracle—for students and recent graduates between the ages of 18 and 31.
Building on the idea of foreign exchange programs, AIESEC’s Taiwan branch, founded in 1964, has in recent years become an important channel through which students can access overseas internships.
Janet Wang, vice president of AIESEC Taiwan’s national office, states that student inquiries about AIESEC overseas internships have increased significantly since last year. For this year’s orientation, for instance, online applications alone numbered 1,500, an increase of 25% over last year.
Peggy Pan, president of AIESEC Taiwan’s national office, says that India, Brazil and mainland China are the three chief regions in which AIESEC provides internship opportunities, and about 38% of successful Taiwanese applicants opt for India. Companies willing to offer internships in Europe or North America are relatively rare.
Pan explains that currently 80% of applicants are business school students, but the internship opportunities available in Western countries are mostly in science and technology; moreover, due to geographical considerations, they prefer to accept students from nearby countries.
Due to stiff competition, each applicant needs to pay an administrative fee of NT$4,000. AIESEC Taiwan forms a committee to review applicants’ résumés and conduct all-English interviews to test their language skills. Because they intend to work overseas, major screening criteria include the ability to cope with stress, and to accept other cultures.
In previous years, screening committees were made up of businesspeople, academics, and students returning from overseas internships. But this year, AIESEC Taiwan changed its screening model: representatives from the national office, and representatives selected by the national office from the 16 university and regional offices, jointly formed a national screening committee. Out of nearly 200 applicants, 130 candidates were selected to go forward to the worldwide screening process, competing with applicants from other countries.
At this second stage of screening, overseas companies arrange to interview candidates who meet their criteria, asking them about their motivations and expected salaries, and determining whether they have the right specialist skills. After jumping through all these hoops, the proportion of Taiwanese applicants successfully obtaining internship work each year through AIESEC is only 40%.
As Taiwanese students’ interest in internships rises, overseas internships that both broaden students’ international vision and enrich their employment history have become an alternative to backpack travel in the eyes of the younger generation.
(Liu Yingfeng/tr. by Chris Nelson)
Internships: Work or Study?Is an internship a job, or education? Should interns get paid? These issues come up for discussion every summer.
New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman recently pointed out that university education is often unsuited to what corporate leaders want, so from a company’s point of view, experience outweighs education. Unfortunately, it is increasingly difficult to find any internship opportunities that pay even minimum wage. For the summer of 2013, Goldman Sachs received more than 17,000 applications for only 350 paid intern positions.
Earlier, the New York Times reported that in 2008 more than half of all university students in the US had experience as interns, but it was estimated that between a quarter and half of these had not received a penny of compensation. The view of the US Department of Labor is that unpaid internships must meet strict criteria set out in 1947 that prove the internship benefits the intern more than the company, that the intern is getting an educational experience similar to vocational training, and that the intern is not taking a job away from a full-time employee. Otherwise the internship would be technically illegal, though the courts remain divided on how strictly to interpret these criteria.
Looking at Taiwan, in July of 2009 the “yes123” job search website surveyed 521 firms and 80% of them said that they would pay interns, with 4.6% even saying that they would pay interns the same amounts paid to full-time employees. But nearly 20% replied that they would not pay interns, because they felt that interns were coming to the company to learn, and the company was already absorbing the costs of managing them and teaching them, which were more than what it would have cost to pay the interns directly.
Under Taiwan’s Labor Standards Act, there are no clear provisions governing whether interns should get paid, so this is a legal gray area.
Meanwhile the Act on Cooperative Education in Senior High Schools and the Protection of Participating Students’ Rights requires that living expenses paid to senior high and vocational school students receiving vocational training in businesses or other institutions contractually partnered with their schools must not be less than the statutory minimum wage.
But in the case of off-campus internships for students in tertiary education, the Ministry of Education considers them to be a “non-hiring relationship,” under which the companies are providing training and practical experience. Therefore the MOE has only “soft” norms, suggesting that companies sign contracts with interns that clearly specify the rights and interests of both parties.
Although internships are valuable in helping people gain experience, if you find an internship open you would be well advised to first get everything clear with the company to avoid any disputes after the fact.
(the editors/tr. by Phil Newell)
Wang Yuhan, who studied in the Department of Computer Science and Information Engineering at National Taiwan University of Science and Technology, spent her summer vacation doing an internship at WeatherRisk, a risk management firm focusing on climate, to help her learn more about what she might want to do for her future career.
It’s graduation season again, and students are looking for work while firms are trying to find talented people. Closing the industry–academia gap will be essential to increase employability of young people.
Unflinching in the face of the hardships of the future, young people stand in the starting blocks of the race for employment, determined to come out ahead.
Oglivy and Mather Taiwan’s “Project Team Terence” is an internship program that aims to discover creative young people with a passion for advertising. Three years ago Ellie Chen (right), a graduate of the Department of Public Finance at National Chengchi University, and York Tsai (left), from the Department of Advertising at Chinese Culture University, performed so well in their internships that they were hired on full-time.
@List.jpg?w=522&h=410&mode=crop&format=webp&quality=80)