Media reports about a graduate from the Department of Economics at Tsing Hua University who went to Australia to work as a “Taiwanese migrant worker” (台勞) have become a source of much debate recently. In my view, the source of the problem with Taiwanese students having to go abroad to work is that for the past two decades, the educational system has only focused on productivity, while ignoring dedication and enthusiasm for teaching, and this has caused both teachers and students to lose sight of the overall goal of education.
Toward the end of the 1980s, a series of educational reforms were implemented that resulted in demands to improve the quality of higher education. There was nothing wrong with the idea, but the approach that was adopted by the educational administration was to set up a series of quantitative benchmarks by which it could judge the quality of education.
Some examples of these reforms are the demand that institutions of higher learning should increase the proportion of teachers holding a doctoral degree and the proportion of teachers at the level of assistant professor and above, encouraging the elevation of specialized technical institutes to university level, establishing a system for teacher evaluation and making the number of articles published in Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI) and Science Citation Index (SCI) journals the standard for promotions and evaluating National Science Council (NSC) program applications. Such absurd measures for evaluating educational quality using quantitative benchmarks also called Key Performance Indicators, or KPIs — were continuously introduced.
The education administration system also includes many other strange ideas and methods, such as determining whether teachers show concern for their students by looking at interview records and how many interviews a teacher has had with students, evaluating whether or not they are thorough in their teaching by looking at whether there is a syllabus and the number of assessments and determining whether a teacher connects with industry by looking at the number of projects operated jointly with industry.
As a result, each term teachers are busy planning lessons for every class, holding interviews with students, visiting students living in dormitories and their place of work, submitting NSC program applications, trying to set up joint projects with industry, promoting their school, getting training at companies, writing articles for publication in SCI or SSCI journals and so on.
Every benchmark is geared toward measuring a teacher’s productivity, and in addition, there are never-ending teacher evaluations. However, none of these benchmarks can measure a teacher’s dedication and enthusiasm for teaching.
The education administration system should return the right of education to the teachers and their students, cut down on the influence of quantitative benchmarks on the quality of education — after maintaining these benchmarks for a period to give schools time to adapt — lower the frequency of teacher evaluations and replace process management with goal management.
We can learn how to guarantee and maintain educational quality by managing educational goals instead of by interfering at every step of the educational process.
Let teachers concentrate on teaching, and let students concentrate on learning.
Feng Kuo-hao is associate professor and chairman of the Department of Public Relations and Advertising at Kun Shan University.
Translated by Perry Svensson
Two sets of economic data released last week by the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) have drawn mixed reactions from the public: One on the nation’s economic performance in the first quarter of the year and the other on Taiwan’s household wealth distribution in 2021. GDP growth for the first quarter was faster than expected, at 6.51 percent year-on-year, an acceleration from the previous quarter’s 4.93 percent and higher than the agency’s February estimate of 5.92 percent. It was also the highest growth since the second quarter of 2021, when the economy expanded 8.07 percent, DGBAS data showed. The growth
In the intricate ballet of geopolitics, names signify more than mere identification: They embody history, culture and sovereignty. The recent decision by China to refer to Arunachal Pradesh as “Tsang Nan” or South Tibet, and to rename Tibet as “Xizang,” is a strategic move that extends beyond cartography into the realm of diplomatic signaling. This op-ed explores the implications of these actions and India’s potential response. Names are potent symbols in international relations, encapsulating the essence of a nation’s stance on territorial disputes. China’s choice to rename regions within Indian territory is not merely a linguistic exercise, but a symbolic assertion
More than seven months into the armed conflict in Gaza, the International Court of Justice ordered Israel to take “immediate and effective measures” to protect Palestinians in Gaza from the risk of genocide following a case brought by South Africa regarding Israel’s breaches of the 1948 Genocide Convention. The international community, including Amnesty International, called for an immediate ceasefire by all parties to prevent further loss of civilian lives and to ensure access to life-saving aid. Several protests have been organized around the world, including at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) and many other universities in the US.
Every day since Oct. 7 last year, the world has watched an unprecedented wave of violence rain down on Israel and the occupied Palestinian Territories — more than 200 days of constant suffering and death in Gaza with just a seven-day pause. Many of us in the American expatriate community in Taiwan have been watching this tragedy unfold in horror. We know we are implicated with every US-made “dumb” bomb dropped on a civilian target and by the diplomatic cover our government gives to the Israeli government, which has only gotten more extreme with such impunity. Meantime, multicultural coalitions of US