One week ago, a weekly business magazine published a survey on the competitiveness of college students in Taiwan. Of the 313 college professors interviewed, 63 percent thought that the overall performance of today's college students is worse than it was ten years ago. They described the youngsters today as "smart, but not hard-working." The main reason that professors gave a less-than-flattering grade for the students is "lacking seriousness about their studies," and "eagerness for quick successes." Some professors were worried that if students continued to lack any sense of crisis, they would sooner or later be surpassed by Chinese students.
Almost immediately after the survey was released, the Ministry of Education (MOE) indicated during a conference of college and university principals that there will be a serious problem of oversupply in the higher-learning market.
The Minister of Education Huang Jung-tsun (黃榮村) indicated that in the past decade the number of colleges rapidly increased, fully saturating the market. Therefore, many schools won't necessarily be able to admit enough students to fill up all of their admission slots. They will necessarily have to make changes and pay more attention to improving the quality of their teaching. The MOE will have to ensure that the availability of educational resources comports with the decrease in the number of students.
In the future, Taiwan's colleges and universities have only two roads to take: either downsize or shut down all together. It is also very important to anticipate competition with schools on the other side of the Taiwan Strait.
In response to the increase in the number of colleges, the MOE is already planning to take multiple measures, including ceasing organization of additional national universities, regulating the increase in the branch campuses of existing schools, restricting the expansion of private colleges, encouraging college integration or mergers, focusing increasingly on the quality rather than the quantity of educational resources, implementing a college-rating system, and other measures.
The college professors and the parents of their students like to say "every generation performs worse than the previous one." From the angle of educational psychology, making such comments suggest adults are not connecting with the thought processes and values of their youngsters.
Another reason that the quality of college students is sagging may be a decline in teaching quality. Although there is no survey to verify this, it is supported by the fact that there is a glut of institutions of higher learning.
Take the top university of Taiwan, National Taiwan University (NTU,國立台灣大學), as an example. In the past few years, because of the gradual decline in the quality of teachers and students, many top engineering-major and science-major students have chosen National Chiao Tung University (國立交通大學) and National Tsinghua University (國立清華大學) instead.
After college education in Taiwan became popularized, the large number of schools may have materialized as a result of the Confucian ideal of "universal education across all classes" (有教無類). But the broadening of university enrollment necessarily leads to a reduction in quality and professionalism. This is a hidden concern of college education in Taiwan.
The re-shaping college campuses into quality, professional learning environments is a task all universities in Taiwan now face. Rather than blaming the students, the adults should ask themselves this: What kind of teaching and professional quality are we offering them?
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