National Taiwan University recently issued an official letter to its faculty and administrative staff headlined: "To safeguard the autonomy of universities, do not respond to media questionnaires." The letter was later published in the university's bulletin, the NTU News (台大校訊). The content of the letter went something like this: To safeguard the autonomy of universities, and considering the variety in the historical backgrounds of each university and regional peculiarities ... The ROC Association of National Universities (國立大學校院協會) has always advocated that universities be compatible with social trends ... a process which cannot be quantified by any simple method ... If the media requests information and asks you to answer evaluative questionnaires, [we request] that management, faculty and staff members not to respond." The letter also asked other national and private universities to follow suit.
Is this the way to maintain the independence of universities? After all, how should we evaluate universities?
We are both elated and worried by the Ministry of Education's gradual easing of restrictive policies on universities. We are elated because universities, especially public universities, will finally be free to develop their own curriculum and methods of instruction, but we are worried because "liberalization" does not guarantee efficiency and excellence.
Economists have always advocated liberalization because, with free competition, the market will ensure the survival of the superior product while weeding out the inferior.
The key to this competition lies in the so-called "market mechanism." However, in Taiwan, it is difficult for university education to operate within the market mechanism because Taiwan has many public universities which do not operate on the "users pay" market principle. Also, we do not believe that education can conform completely with the principles of the market mechanism because it has important characteristics that cause the market mechanism to fail. It is therefore necessary to impose an artificial system to reward superior performance to rectify its operation under the market mechanism after liberalization. Generally, an evaluation system serves this purpose.
If there is only liberalization and no complementary evaluation system, then inevitably, the quality of national universities will decline. In fact, national universities, like state-run enterprises, are relatively less efficient than private universities. That today's national universities are superior to their private counterparts is purely the result of the piles of money they receive. If a properly run private university receives the kind of budget the national universities currently do, they could certainly have unlimited potential.
In this context, allowing more autonomy for national universities without an evaluation system, or with an evaluation system that does not effectively reward superior performance, then national universities will inevitably degenerate into venues for power struggles -- the inevitable result of institutes with power and privileges but no responsibility. To be honest, any move by the education ministry to ease restrictions on universities -- whether it is the freedom to elect its own president, autonomy in personnel appointments, or freedom to set tuition fees and courses -- will be irresponsible if not accompanied by an evaluation system.
RSS