The Ministry of Education is dealing with a crisis in Taiwan’s higher education by combining innovation with closure.
The former focuses on helping universities become profitable, while the latter focuses on how to handle schools that are in danger of having to close down. Either way, the focus is on the institutions themselves, while there are no complementary measures for addressing the problems of teachers and students who really should receive the most attention.
When I first returned to Taiwan 20 years ago, it was much easier to teach than it is today. When teaching graduate courses, students were readily able to embrace the challenge of a reading list containing 40 to 50 English-language books. Since that time, I no longer dare include any titles in English on the reading list, and students are unlikely to even read all the Chinese-language books on the list.
Undergraduate students are of even greater concern than graduate students. They do not like to read and are not interested in theories, and it is now normal to see them playing with their mobile phones during class.
Given this teaching environment, it is not strange that many teachers want to quit.
In addition, due to the so-called “teachers’ evaluations” that the ministry has implemented under its Teaching Excellence Project, teachers usually need to curry favor with students to get higher scores, and this comes at the cost of quality.
This situation reveals that higher education in Taiwan really needs a major paradigm shift. Over a long period of time, the student-teacher ratio in colleges and universities has risen constantly as schools enrolled large numbers of students.
However, private schools are taking a variety of actions. Some are beginning to replace regular teachers with teachers on short-term contracts, and others have started to offer larger classes — some even as large as upward of 500 students.
Student morale is declining as the size of classes continues to expand and there is cause for concern over the quality of Taiwan’s higher education.
An ideal way to resolve the crisis would be to reduce the student-faculty ratio to ensure that teachers have enough energy to care for their students.
With 128 credits required to graduate, students must gain an average of 16 credits every semester and have little time for preparation. The quality of their learning experience is likely to deteriorate. Perhaps the ministry should also consider how to cut this inflated credit requirement to allow students more autonomous learning.
At a time when the birthrate is declining, the government should offer incentives to universities that hold and follow ideals to reduce student-teacher ratios and increase teaching quality. It should also reduce the number of teaching hours required for full-time teachers.
For a professor, the workload should be cut from eight to six credits every semester, and the time used for the other two credits could instead be used for student counseling. A teacher should also be responsible for no more than 20 students.
Through such close interaction, teachers could gain an understanding of students’ problems and help students adjust their attitude and passion for learning and boost learning effectiveness.
A senior educator once said that he sent his daughter to Yale University because she is an active learner, but because his son is a passive learner, he was sent to a private college in California with a student-teacher ratio of one to eight. Teachers were able to closely monitor his learning at all times. The latter could serve as a good example for Taiwan’s instruction method.
The ministry spent NT$100 billion (US$31.08 million) on the decade-long Aim for the Top University Project between 2006 and this year, but the project has been ineffective, while academic research integrity is repeatedly questioned in Taiwan.
It is time for us to go back to teaching-oriented education, and to start to cultivate talent.
University teachers should ask themselves whether they have a greater sense of achievement from cultivating talented students who are productive or from publishing a paper that is only cited by a few people?
Lai Ting-ming is a professor in the Department of Information and Communications at Shih Hsin University.
Translated by Eddy Chang
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