Citing a shortage of funds, the Ministry of Education is halving the budget for the Teaching Excellence program for this year to NT$2.5 billion (US$78 million), while retaining the full budget for a controversial NT$50 billion five-year program to create top universities. A policy that favors certain sectors over others, and rich over poor, is a slap in the face of the teachers and students at the several dozen schools that have worked hard to achieve the Teaching Excellence award.
Higher education in this country has long been a matter of stealing from the poor and giving to the rich, working against private schools while promoting public schools and constantly replicating and reinforcing class structures. Disadvantaged schools and students have no chance to improve their lot since government policies continue to favor the strong.
The ministry favors a few top schools mainly because it wants to raise Taiwan’s international competitiveness. The purpose of the NT$50 billion program is to place a few Taiwanese schools on the list of the world’s top 100 schools. In this year’s Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU) recently released by Shanghai Jiao Tong University’s Center for World-Class Universities, National Taiwan University (NTU) had “improved” its ranking from 150 last year to 127. This caused a lot of smug people to say that not only is NTU the best of all universities in Taiwan, China and Hong Kong, it also managed, for the first time, to surpass the National University of Singapore, which ranked 145, thus making NTU the best among “Chinese” universities.
The fact is that in the ARWU ranking, universities ranked 101 to 150 are grouped and listed alphabetically, so there is no difference between 127 and 145. Not much to rejoice about, in other words.
Even if they had managed to make it to the top 100, what is the difference between 99 and 101? Who remembers any of the schools ranked below the first dozen or so on the list? How many people have heard of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich, which ranks 23rd?
Furthermore, top Taiwanese universities like the National Tsing Hua University or National Chiao Tung University always rank in the 300 to 350 group, belying the idea that the NT$50 billion five-year budget is having any kind of effect.
An education policy focused on placing a university on the list of the world’s top 100 universities merely highlights the use of political rhetoric in developing countries. Even a place on the World Universities’ Ranking on the Web, which aims to promote Web publication and electronic access to scientific publications, is on the wish list of domestic universities, with schools ranking in the 500s and 600s making a big deal out of it. This obsession with ranking has reached unimaginable proportions.
National competitiveness depends on raising the skills of the whole nation, not on favoring a small elite. We cannot rely on cultivating a few top universities and ignore the rights and potential of the majority of university students, nor can we continue to create privileged and disadvantaged groups in complete disregard of social justice and fairness.
There have been reports that the ministry was considering cutting the budget for the “top university program,” but a few “powerful individuals” intervened and the budget for the Teaching Excellence program will instead be halved, creating a difficult situation for 30 to 40 universities that already receive little support each year.
The main concern for Taiwan’s higher education is how to resist the two main forces that have developed in response to educational formalism. In a pluralistic democracy, universities should have the power to strive for equality and pursue difference. Not every Taiwanese university wants to become a top university or be a factory for academic production, but they still have the right to demand, on a foundation of equality, that they be allowed to use their specialties to train the next generation.
Even more importantly, the state must not use national assets to favor a small elite, nor must it sacrifice the rights of the disadvantaged in order to secure the future of the privileged. The only right left to the disadvantaged would then be the right to take to streets.
Chiou Tian-juh is a professor at Shih Hsin University’s Department of Social Psychology.
Translated by Perry Svensson
Saudi Arabian largesse is flooding Egypt’s cultural scene, but the reception is mixed. Some welcome new “cooperation” between two regional powerhouses, while others fear a hostile takeover by Riyadh. In Cairo, historically the cultural capital of the Arab world, Egyptian Minister of Culture Nevine al-Kilany recently hosted Saudi Arabian General Entertainment Authority chairman Turki al-Sheikh. The deep-pocketed al-Sheikh has emerged as a Medici-like patron for Egypt’s cultural elite, courted by Cairo’s top talent to produce a slew of forthcoming films. A new three-way agreement between al-Sheikh, Kilany and United Media Services — a multi-media conglomerate linked to state intelligence that owns much of
The US and other countries should take concrete steps to confront the threats from Beijing to avoid war, US Representative Mario Diaz-Balart said in an interview with Voice of America on March 13. The US should use “every diplomatic economic tool at our disposal to treat China as what it is... to avoid war,” Diaz-Balart said. Giving an example of what the US could do, he said that it has to be more aggressive in its military sales to Taiwan. Actions by cross-party US lawmakers in the past few years such as meeting with Taiwanese officials in Washington and Taipei, and
Denmark’s “one China” policy more and more resembles Beijing’s “one China” principle. At least, this is how things appear. In recent interactions with the Danish state, such as applying for residency permits, a Taiwanese’s nationality would be listed as “China.” That designation occurs for a Taiwanese student coming to Denmark or a Danish citizen arriving in Denmark with, for example, their Taiwanese partner. Details of this were published on Sunday in an article in the Danish daily Berlingske written by Alexander Sjoberg and Tobias Reinwald. The pretext for this new practice is that Denmark does not recognize Taiwan as a state under
The Republic of China (ROC) on Taiwan has no official diplomatic allies in the EU. With the exception of the Vatican, it has no official allies in Europe at all. This does not prevent the ROC — Taiwan — from having close relations with EU member states and other European countries. The exact nature of the relationship does bear revisiting, if only to clarify what is a very complicated and sensitive idea, the details of which leave considerable room for misunderstanding, misrepresentation and disagreement. Only this week, President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) received members of the European Parliament’s Delegation for Relations