The Ministry of Education recently unveiled a subsidy program to retain top academics in Taiwan. The “Yushan Project,” to be implemented from next year, aims to make the nation’s higher education system more internationally competitive by allowing colleges and universities to pay their professors and researchers higher and more flexible salaries.
The program consists of three components: the selection of 1,000 “Yushan Scholars” who are to receive up to NT$5 million (US$164,701) for a period of three years, a special NT$2 billion annual fund for schools and research facilities to pay young professors and researchers, and a 10 percent increase in the research allowance for full-time professors.
According to the ministry’s estimate, the project would benefit 19,000 academics and cost NT$5.6 billion per year at most.
While the program has drawn mixed reactions from the public, it shows that the government is aware of the brain drain in the higher education system and willing to find a solution for it.
A growing number of academics have been lured away from Taiwan in the past few years, and some people have attributed this to the nation’s low salaries for higher education faculty compared with the region’s other economies.
However, low salaries might not be the only reason for the exodus of local talent. Without an effort to create a truly healthy environment for teaching and research at local colleges and universities, the project might not be as effective as hoped.
If academic achievement is the entry ticket to the elite status of “Yushan Scholar,” who or which institution has the power to make the selection?
Second, what about those who do not make it to the position of Yushan Scholar — would they not feel ashamed?
Third, it remains unclear whether the program is to focus on academics’ performance in terms of research, or teaching. If this is not clarified early on, that could harm the long-term efficiency of resource allocation in higher education.
Finally, any stain on the selection process for Yushan Scholars could cause conflict between established and young academics.
However, what is most troubling about the selection of Yushan Scholars and other elite designations in academia is that only a few professors and researchers would benefit from the grants, while the vast majority of academics would remain stuck where they are and with the same resources.
For various reasons — either because of the nation’s economic fundamentals, schools’ organizational issues or their individual situation — most professors and researchers do not expect opportunities to move up in their field or profession. This is an issue that requires the government to comprehensively address tuition and salary problems in higher education.
Granted, the program sounds like a good start to addressing the problem of academics’ salaries, but policymakers must remember that good intentions alone are not enough. The problems affecting higher education are not just low pay, but also the nation’s declining population, domestic political and economic constraints, and overall social mobility in our society.
It is a good thing that the ministry is planning to hold four public hearings within a month to collect feedback from the public about the project, hoping to build a consensus among academics.
However, a deeper problem in higher education is that a rising number of our brightest young people are leaving Taiwan for better job opportunities abroad, and few of them return. This other brain drain will weigh on the nation’s future, too.
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