A high-ranking education official yesterday expressed confidence that distinguished high school students would stay and study in Taiwan despite China’s plan to allow Taiwanese to apply for places at Chinese universities using their scores on the Taiwanese college entrance exams.
Department of Higher Education Director Ho Cho-fei (何卓飛) said a survey conducted by the Ministry of Education showed that up to 80 percent of respondents said they would not send their children to study in China even if Taiwan recognized Chinese diplomas.
Only 8 percent of those polled said they would consider the option, while 12 percent said they would choose to do so even if the government decided not to recognize Chinese diplomas, Ho said.
“Those who want to go [to study in China] will go anyway, but most will stay,” Ho said.
Ho made the remarks in response to an announcement by Chinese Vice Minister of Education Yuan Gui-ren (袁貴仁) during the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT)-Chinese Communist Party (CCP) forum in Changsha, Hunan Province, at the weekend.
Yuan said on Saturday that China was planning to allow Taiwanese students who score well on Taiwan’s college entrance examinations to apply to study at universities in China. Yuan said Taiwanese students would be admitted if they passed interviews.
Currently, Taiwanese students who wish to attend Chinese universities have to either take special entrance examinations for students from Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau or sit China’s college entrance examination. Taiwanese students receive an extra 20-point bonus on their scores.
However, Taiwan does not recognize Chinese diplomas, even though the KMT administration has announced that recognition of the diplomas would be one of the objectives of its cross-strait educational exchanges.
The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) has objected to the policy.
KMT Legislator Cheng Chin-ling (鄭金玲) of the legislature’s Education and Culture Committee said China’s plan could serve as a driving force for Taiwanese universities to improve the quality of their teaching.
On the other hand, DPP Legislator Chen Ting-fei (陳亭妃), also a member of the committee, voiced her concern that China could take this opportunity to force the Taiwanese government to recognize Chinese diplomas.
She said that the survival of Taiwan’s universities might be at stake if more Taiwanese students studied in China.
Meanwhile, Peking University president Zhou Qifeng (周其鳳), who is in Taiwan for an eight-day visit to promote academic and student exchanges among tertiary education institutions, said he hoped his visit would help persuade Taiwan to recognize Chinese diplomas.
“It is widely believed that Taiwanese recognition of Chinese diplomas and academic accreditations will further boost cross-strait student exchanges and mutual understanding,” Zhou said at Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport.
Peking University admits about 200 Taiwanese students each year, Zhou said.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching