There has been no shortage of news coverage on the government's pledge to crack down on illegal foreign teachers. Many foreigners work in private schools that specialize in kindergarten care during the morning and elementary classes in the afternoon.
Foreigners teaching in such schools are granted their work permits based on their work in the elementary classes. This may be surprising to read, but most foreigners do not realize that working in a kindergarten is illegal. Foreigners who come to teach here typically use the Internet to secure a job before arriving. This is done through the Web sites of placement agencies.
All of these placement agencies are located around Taiwan and never inform the arriving foreign teachers that the job they are about begin is, in fact, illegal. The largest such operation is International Avenue Consulting, also known as IACC, based in Taichung. The IACC Web site (http://www.iacc.com.tw/) specifically caters to foreigners wanting to teach in Taiwan and there is no lack of job postings for kindergarten positions on their Web site.
Their Web site does not mention that kindergarten work is illegal. If the government honestly wants to crack down on illegal foreign teachers in kindergartens, then it is the placement agencies that the government needs to address first. Once the placement agencies are operating legally and within the law, the number of illegal teachers in kindergartens will wane.
Dylan Thomas
Hsinchu
Taiwan’s higher education system is facing an existential crisis. As the demographic drop-off continues to empty classrooms, universities across the island are locked in a desperate battle for survival, international student recruitment and crucial Ministry of Education funding. To win this battle, institutions have turned to what seems like an objective measure of quality: global university rankings. Unfortunately, this chase is a costly illusion, and taxpayers are footing the bill. In the past few years, the goalposts have shifted from pure research output to “sustainability” and “societal impact,” largely driven by commercial metrics such as the UK-based Times Higher Education (THE) Impact
History might remember 2026, not 2022, as the year artificial intelligence (AI) truly changed everything. ChatGPT’s launch was a product moment. What is happening now is an anthropological moment: AI is no longer merely answering questions. It is now taking initiative and learning from others to get things done, behaving less like software and more like a colleague. The economic consequence is the rise of the one-person company — a structure anticipated in the 2024 book The Choices Amid Great Changes, which I coauthored. The real target of AI is not labor. It is hierarchy. When AI sharply reduces the cost
The inter-Korean relationship, long defined by national division, offers the clearest mirror within East Asia for cross-strait relations. Yet even there, reunification language is breaking down. The South Korean government disclosed on Wednesday last week that North Korea’s constitutional revision in March had deleted references to reunification and added a territorial clause defining its border with South Korea. South Korea is also seriously debating whether national reunification with North Korea is still necessary. On April 27, South Korean President Lee Jae-myung marked the eighth anniversary of the Panmunjom Declaration, the 2018 inter-Korean agreement in which the two Koreas pledged to
I wrote this before US President Donald Trump embarked on his uneventful state visit to China on Thursday. So, I shall confine my observations to the joint US-Philippine military exercise of April 20 through May 8, known collectively as “Balikatan 2026.” This year’s Balikatan was notable for its “firsts.” First, it was conducted primarily with Taiwan in mind, not the Philippines or even the South China Sea. It also showed that in the Pacific, America’s alliance network is still robust. Allies are enthusiastic about America’s renewed leadership in the region. Nine decades ago, in 1936, America had neither military strength
RSS