In a recent article in a Chinese-language newspaper, medical researcher Chen Yao-chang (陳耀昌) said fewer young Taiwanese academics are attending academic meetings abroad and fewer Taiwanese students abroad are publishing articles in important international periodicals. Quoting data from the Ministry of Edu-cation, he said the number of Taiwanese studying overseas has fallen by 30 percent in recent years.
For the biotechnological field, Chen's speciality, he suggested the introduction of top researchers from China. Academia Sinica President Lee Yuan-tseh (李遠哲) made a similar suggestion while he was still teaching at Berkeley. As everyone knows, Indian engineers benefitted from the development of Singapore's computer and information industries. The glory of Silicon Valley in the 1990s to a large extent depended on overseas students from India, Taiwan and other Asian countries.
The question of whether talented high-tech personnel should be imported is an economic issue that can be rationally evaluated. Such economic behavior involves mutual incentives and benefits, and in an era when labor is moving freely around the globe, has become the norm. Labor mobility of course has a political and social impact, but those issues can be planned for on a systemic level.
The more interesting question is why fewer Taiwanese are choosing to study overseas. Is it because higher education in this country is improving? Or is it because the younger generation feels that the benefits of higher education don't meet the cost and so they are not motivated to make the investment?
Since the 1980s and 1990s, more Taiwanese have returned from studying abroad to take up teaching positions and this has improved the quality of higher education in the country. During the first year or two after the Tiananmen massacre in 1989, China interacted less with the outside world and this allowed more Taiwanese the chance to study at top schools in Europe and the US. Taiwanese were also gradually accepted at research institutions where only few had been accepted in the past.
However, a big change took place in the second half of the 1990s. Taiwanese now have a much smaller chance of being accepted at first-rate schools in Europe and the US than do students from China and the same is true for Taiwanese trying to gain employment in US academic institutions upon graduation.
Taiwan's youth also have less interest in pursuing higher studies. At most, they simply want to study abroad. Many see higher education simply as an opportunity to postpone employment. Many teachers also say that men are increasingly reluctant to go on to postgraduate studies, and that their quality is falling further behind that of women.
These issues cannot be blamed on the educational reform chaos. These young university graduates are not the guinea pigs of educational re-form. Academic experts critical of the reforms also say the teaching materials they have been given for middle schools are the best ever.
This is the biggest problem for educational reform -- when the economy is at its best and educational conditions are at their most stable, the will of young people to go on to higher studies is at its weakest. Some middle-aged intellectuals critical of the educational reforms often base a rejection of these reforms on their own experience.
Reality proves, however, that even young students trained using the educational methods of the older generation do not strive toward achievement and are unable to motivate themselves toward new achievements. This has already caused Taiwan's competitiveness to decline. Doesn't this also prove that educational reform is absolutely necessary?
Ku Er-teh is a freelance writer.
Translated by Perry Svensson
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