British research institute Oxford Economics has released its Global Talent 2021 report in which Taiwan is graded as possessing the strongest “talent deficit” of any nation in the world.
Six out of 10 Taiwanese who leave the nation to work abroad are professionals. Due to a skewed birth ratio and an aging society, Taiwan’s talent deficit is even more serious than in Japan.
Every year Taiwanese universities take on 300 to 400 doctoral students, including 110 from other nations. Regardless of whether they are publicly funded or independently funded, and no matter whether their doctorate is from a local institution or obtained abroad, all doctorate holders face the same problem: They are trapped in a contracting job market.
Highly educated, talented young Taiwanese are facing a difficult dilemma: live a cloistered life at home or join the low-salaried masses; become an exile in China or stay behind and stagnate within Taiwan’s unstable higher education market.
Half of the teachers at Taiwanese higher learning institutions are aged 50 and above. Full-time positions at colleges and universities are hard to come by. Senior teaching staff are either doing all they can to postpone their retirement or are changing jobs.
State-run and private colleges and universities alike are only offering the younger generation temporary, project-based teaching positions or low-salary, part-time positions.
National Chung Hsing University is even offering unpaid part-time teaching positions, providing the bare minimum to give doctorate holders the title of a teacher.
Could it be that Taiwan has no need for talented planners or designers? Graduates from National Taiwan University are often unable to find suitable jobs and end up going to China.
Surely, as an aging society, Taiwan is in need of talented policymakers. One Taiwanese student who obtained a doctorate on aging societies from a Japanese university was unable to find work after returning home and was forced to go to China to teach for one year.
However, the student could not stand the restrictions on academic freedom at Chinese universities and came back to Taiwan, picking up part-time work teaching Japanese.
Is Taiwan not in need of talented students of Aboriginal studies to help formulate policy in this area?
A Taiwanese student with a government scholarship studied at a famous Canadian university and obtained a doctorate from Academia Sinica. Currently out of work, their career is on the rocks.
Doctorate holders from domestic institutions are undervalued, while those who have obtained their degree abroad are out of work. Public scholarship recipients finding it difficult to land jobs demonstrates that even the highest-educated in society have become casualties of Taiwan’s broken education policy.
Last year, Beijing increased the number of benefits and subsidies aimed to attract Taiwanese businesses and professionals to 31, and has also been buying up and investing in Taiwanese assets, and organizing “exchange programs.”
However, these tactics have branched out to include attracting Taiwanese talent and capital, including domestic research and development organizations.
Furthermore, individual researchers are allowed to apply to participate in key Chinese research projects and can apply for Chinese award programs.
According to a survey conducted for the Ministry of Science and Technology, 75 percent of Taiwanese under 40 who have moved abroad are teaching in China.
Taiwan’s education problem has become a national security threat. As the nation’s political parties launch primaries to select candidates for next year’s presidential election, Taiwanese should put pressure on the candidates to ensure that they propose viable solutions to deal with the nation’s chronic brain drain.
Tai Po-fen is a professor at Fu Jen Catholic University’s sociology department.
Translated by Edward Jones
Saudi Arabian largesse is flooding Egypt’s cultural scene, but the reception is mixed. Some welcome new “cooperation” between two regional powerhouses, while others fear a hostile takeover by Riyadh. In Cairo, historically the cultural capital of the Arab world, Egyptian Minister of Culture Nevine al-Kilany recently hosted Saudi Arabian General Entertainment Authority chairman Turki al-Sheikh. The deep-pocketed al-Sheikh has emerged as a Medici-like patron for Egypt’s cultural elite, courted by Cairo’s top talent to produce a slew of forthcoming films. A new three-way agreement between al-Sheikh, Kilany and United Media Services — a multi-media conglomerate linked to state intelligence that owns much of
The US and other countries should take concrete steps to confront the threats from Beijing to avoid war, US Representative Mario Diaz-Balart said in an interview with Voice of America on March 13. The US should use “every diplomatic economic tool at our disposal to treat China as what it is... to avoid war,” Diaz-Balart said. Giving an example of what the US could do, he said that it has to be more aggressive in its military sales to Taiwan. Actions by cross-party US lawmakers in the past few years such as meeting with Taiwanese officials in Washington and Taipei, and
Denmark’s “one China” policy more and more resembles Beijing’s “one China” principle. At least, this is how things appear. In recent interactions with the Danish state, such as applying for residency permits, a Taiwanese’s nationality would be listed as “China.” That designation occurs for a Taiwanese student coming to Denmark or a Danish citizen arriving in Denmark with, for example, their Taiwanese partner. Details of this were published on Sunday in an article in the Danish daily Berlingske written by Alexander Sjoberg and Tobias Reinwald. The pretext for this new practice is that Denmark does not recognize Taiwan as a state under
The Republic of China (ROC) on Taiwan has no official diplomatic allies in the EU. With the exception of the Vatican, it has no official allies in Europe at all. This does not prevent the ROC — Taiwan — from having close relations with EU member states and other European countries. The exact nature of the relationship does bear revisiting, if only to clarify what is a very complicated and sensitive idea, the details of which leave considerable room for misunderstanding, misrepresentation and disagreement. Only this week, President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) received members of the European Parliament’s Delegation for Relations