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Tu plugs bursary

Minister of Education Tu Cheng-sheng (杜正勝) yesterday promoted the Taiwan Scholarship Program for overseas students which the government launched earlier this year to internationalize domestic universities.

Tu encouraged a group of overseas students at the National Pingtung University of Science and Technology to tell their friends about the scholarships, adding that applications would be accepted at any of the nation's representative offices overseas.

The first batch of some 500 scholarship recipients will arrive in Taiwan this month, Tu said.

He said that Taiwan was lagging behind many countries in this regard, pointing out that there are about 110,000 overseas students in Japan, 80,000 in China and 11,000 in South Korea, compared with only 1,500 here.

Citing the Pingtung university's Graduate Institute of Tropical Agriculture and International Co-operation as an example, Tu said that Taiwan's universities would attract more overseas students if they were better equipped.

According to university president Chou Chang-hung (周昌弘), the institute has for a long time worked with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs' International Co-operation and Development Fund and the Council of Agriculture to provide agricultural-technology training to people from the nation's diplomatic allies.

Chou said the institute was a pioneer in internationalization, launching a full scholarship program for overseas students pursuing a master's degree or doctorate in 1998 and offering 53 courses in English. More than 50 master's degree students from over 30 countries had graduated.
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