The Legislative Yuan recently passed several bills regarding the retirement and pensions of public-sector employees. As it is inevitable that higher education will undergo many changes, university presidents and professors want the government to improve academics’ retirement benefits to attract more talent and prevent a brain drain.
According to the pension system, public-school teachers receive the same pension and retirement benefits regardless of performance. Although academics sometimes receive very good retirement benefits, like an extremely high income replacement ratio, it rarely happens.
The Ministry of Education should consider setting down different rules for higher education faculty and researchers at public institutions, instead of applying the same pension schemes and retirement benefits to all civil servants, including public-school teachers. Establishing a separate salary and pension system for academics would bring several benefits.
First, providing more flexible salaries to university faculty and researchers would make Taiwan more competitive in the global market, improve higher education and boost university rankings.
Second, offering salaries to academics based on performance in research or teaching, instead of paying everyone the same, would also be fairer.
Third, while civil servants are supposed to follow instructions and abide by rules, academics need to be innovative and imaginative.
As academic Hu Shih (胡適) said, researchers should “make bold assumptions and try to prove them carefully.”
Being an academic requires an entirely different approach from that of most government employees. Academics who think like civil servants and are resistant to innovation are unlikely to make major contributions.
Fourth, if academics were not bound by rules designed for civil servants, they would be able to enjoy more flexibility in obtaining or using research grants. This could prevent unnecessary legal issues due to flawed regulations — such as the 2013 false receipt controversy in which many academics were embroiled.
To improve Taiwan’s global academic reputation, we must encourage academics and researchers to return to Taiwan and stay here. The government should develop a new reward system to keep academics from leaving.
Kent Lin is a professor at the Institute of Religion and Humanity at Tzu Chi University.
Translated by Tu Yu-an
In the first year of his second term, US President Donald Trump continued to shake the foundations of the liberal international order to realize his “America first” policy. However, amid an atmosphere of uncertainty and unpredictability, the Trump administration brought some clarity to its policy toward Taiwan. As expected, bilateral trade emerged as a major priority for the new Trump administration. To secure a favorable trade deal with Taiwan, it adopted a two-pronged strategy: First, Trump accused Taiwan of “stealing” chip business from the US, indicating that if Taipei did not address Washington’s concerns in this strategic sector, it could revisit its Taiwan
The stocks of rare earth companies soared on Monday following news that the Trump administration had taken a 10 percent stake in Oklahoma mining and magnet company USA Rare Earth Inc. Such is the visible benefit enjoyed by the growing number of firms that count Uncle Sam as a shareholder. Yet recent events surrounding perhaps what is the most well-known state-picked champion, Intel Corp, exposed a major unseen cost of the federal government’s unprecedented intervention in private business: the distortion of capital markets that have underpinned US growth and innovation since its founding. Prior to Intel’s Jan. 22 call with analysts
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) challenges and ignores the international rules-based order by violating Taiwanese airspace using a high-flying drone: This incident is a multi-layered challenge, including a lawfare challenge against the First Island Chain, the US, and the world. The People’s Liberation Army (PLA) defines lawfare as “controlling the enemy through the law or using the law to constrain the enemy.” Chen Yu-cheng (陳育正), an associate professor at the Graduate Institute of China Military Affairs Studies, at Taiwan’s Fu Hsing Kang College (National Defense University), argues the PLA uses lawfare to create a precedent and a new de facto legal
International debate on Taiwan is obsessed with “invasion countdowns,” framing the cross-strait crisis as a matter of military timetables and political opportunity. However, the seismic political tremors surrounding Central Military Commission (CMC) vice chairman Zhang Youxia (張又俠) suggested that Washington and Taipei are watching the wrong clock. Beijing is constrained not by a lack of capability, but by an acute fear of regime-threatening military failure. The reported sidelining of Zhang — a combat veteran in a largely unbloodied force and long-time loyalist of Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) — followed a year of purges within the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA)
RSS