In an effort to promote the quality of higher education, the Ministry of Education will initiate a university-evaluation system in March and establish a juridical association next year to conduct the evaluation, minister Huang Jong-tsun (
The ministry yesterday held a conference on evaluation criteria and procedures for world-class universities, inviting international experts in higher education from the US, Japan, Australia and South Korea to talk about how to set up a evaluation system and have discussions with local college chancellors and ministry officials.
Huang made the remarks in the opening speech, saying the ministry hoped to learn from other countries' experiences and soon implement the evaluation system, which has been put off for many years.
"The ministry tried to persuade universities to set up a mechanism to assess the existing institutes for decades," Huang said.
"However, it is a pity that it couldn't be implemented because of many technical problems and different notions about the evaluation indicators," he said.
With the increasingly keen competition in higher education globally, Huang said, the ministry thinks it is time to launch an evaluation mechanism to determine universities' quality and academic research achievements, otherwise domestic research talent will gradually flow to other countries.
Huang said that the ministry will allocate about NT$50 million in the coming budget year to establish a juridical association focusing on conducting the university evaluation, based on impartiality and objectivity.
The universities will not be involved in the evaluation organization and the ministry will only play a role as an assistant, Huang said.
Several international participants indicated that higher education is critical to a nation's economic prosperity and international competitiveness in this knowledge-based era.
"A credible evaluation system to uplift the quality of higher education is indispensable for any country," said David Woodhouse, executive director of the Australian Universities Quality Agency.
"However, no country should copy another country's evaluation system, but, having studied other systems, should design one that is adapted to its own needs and possibilities," he said.
Woodhouse pointed out it is important to develop consistent evaluation indicators and values for judgment. For example, Woodhouse said, his agency trained many full-time auditors to investigate and research credible and useful approaches for assessing universities and thus have a good reputation in Australian academic circles.
Vice president of Academia Sinica and former education minister Ovid Tseng (曾志朗), who also attended the conference, told the Taipei Times that he hopes universities do not consider the evaluation results as a form of punishment or criteria to apply the ministry's subsidies, but regard it as "a natural thing."
Tseng also said that he expects universities to gradually establish a culture that encourages professors and students to publish their research papers in international academic circles, which is one of the essentials of building a sound university-evaluation system.
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