The Joint Board of College Recruitment Commission has decided that starting next school year, students who have scored zero in one subject in the General Scholastic Ability Test will still be eligible for admission through application and recommendation, as long as their overall score for all subjects required for the program exceeds zero.
The commission said the change could have positive, as well as negative effects: It could help reduce stress among students, but it could also encourage them to give up preparing for certain subjects early on.
Below are some questions to be considered in this context.
First, what is the primary cause of the low enrollment at universities? Is it the low birth rate or that universities nationwide have become too homogeneous?
As the birth rate remains low, which is amplified by a drop in births during years of the tiger, a dozen universities now face the prospect of possibly closing down after their enrollment rates for the last academic year fell below 60 percent.
There are many public and private universities, but very few of them offer something that others do not. To compete for students, schools have engaged in a “price war,” leaving many private schools at the bottom with few, or even no, new enrollments.
Second, what percentage of students is especially talented in a particular field? While it would be sufficient to simply grant exceptions to such students, allowing them to apply for universities despite having scored zero in one subject, to the bewilderment of many, the commission decided to drastically change the admission rules from requiring students to study every single subject to allowing them to abandon almost any subject.
This “all or nothing” change makes one wonder how many talented students would benefit from it. It is certainly a good thing to try and make sure all students get accepted to a program they like, but is it not better to do so by granting exceptions to the few students who are highly gifted, rather than lowering the admission threshold for all universities?
The government should not use gifted students as an excuse to help diploma mills at the bottom of the ladder recruit more students.
Third, how would lowering the threshold for university admissions help prevent schools with declining enrollment from closing down?
Minister of Education Pan Wen-chung (潘文忠) has said that closing down universities is not the only solution, and that the priority is to make good use of existing educational resources and help transform them.
Lowering the admission threshold for all universities is not a long-term solution. It is little different from cutting prices to clear stocks. Only by helping schools transform and develop distinctive features can they attract students.
Fourth, what is the purpose of reducing the pressure on students? Our times and environment are constantly changing, and anything we do necessarily involves stress.
What would students gain from reduced stress from education? Would they be required to spend more time learning additional skills, or would they end up doing nothing with their free time, since getting a diploma would have become extremely easy?
If stress reduction fails to bring about positive change, the nation’s higher education could end up losing its competitiveness.
Hsu Hui-huang is a doctoral candidate at National Chung Cheng University’s business administration department.
Translated by Tu Yu-an
Could Asia be on the verge of a new wave of nuclear proliferation? A look back at the early history of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), which recently celebrated its 75th anniversary, illuminates some reasons for concern in the Indo-Pacific today. US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin recently described NATO as “the most powerful and successful alliance in history,” but the organization’s early years were not without challenges. At its inception, the signing of the North Atlantic Treaty marked a sea change in American strategic thinking. The United States had been intent on withdrawing from Europe in the years following
My wife and I spent the week in the interior of Taiwan where Shuyuan spent her childhood. In that town there is a street that functions as an open farmer’s market. Walk along that street, as Shuyuan did yesterday, and it is next to impossible to come home empty-handed. Some mangoes that looked vaguely like others we had seen around here ended up on our table. Shuyuan told how she had bought them from a little old farmer woman from the countryside who said the mangoes were from a very old tree she had on her property. The big surprise
The issue of China’s overcapacity has drawn greater global attention recently, with US Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen urging Beijing to address its excess production in key industries during her visit to China last week. Meanwhile in Brussels, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen last week said that Europe must have a tough talk with China on its perceived overcapacity and unfair trade practices. The remarks by Yellen and Von der Leyen come as China’s economy is undergoing a painful transition. Beijing is trying to steer the world’s second-largest economy out of a COVID-19 slump, the property crisis and
Former president Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) trip to China provides a pertinent reminder of why Taiwanese protested so vociferously against attempts to force through the cross-strait service trade agreement in 2014 and why, since Ma’s presidential election win in 2012, they have not voted in another Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) candidate. While the nation narrowly avoided tragedy — the treaty would have put Taiwan on the path toward the demobilization of its democracy, which Courtney Donovan Smith wrote about in the Taipei Times in “With the Sunflower movement Taiwan dodged a bullet” — Ma’s political swansong in China, which included fawning dithyrambs