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University officials tout international cooperation

In an effort to raise the competitiveness of Taiwan's institutions of higher education to international standards and encourage international exchanges, university representatives and government officials from Taiwan and Canada yesterday met and pledged to strengthen academic cooperation.

Fourteen representatives from 12 Canadian universities, and 22 representatives from 14 Taiwanese universities yesterday attended the 8th Canada-Taiwan Conference on Higher Education, which was sponsored by the Ministry of Education.

Addressing the opening ceremony of the conference, Education Minister Tu Cheng-sheng (杜正勝) stress the importance of improving the reputations of the nation's universities and colleges internationally by way of cooperation and exchanges with institutions from aboard.

"One of the ministry's main objective is to make our universities more internationalized. Cooperation with other countries is an important component of this objective," Tu said. "If Canada and Taiwan can work more closely together, we will be able to reach our goal as we continue to learn from each other's experience."

During the biannual conference, participants shared thoughts and experiences ranging from student and faculty exchanges and joint/dual degree recognition, to intra-institution credit recognition programs.

Sharing his academic exchange experience, Canadian Philip Wood, and associate vice president of student affairs at McMaster University, said that expanding scholarships programs and other kinds of financial support is crucial to attracting more people to international exchange programs.

"In addition to curriculum, I think one of the keys of a successful exchange program is sufficient financial support -- especially for students," Wood said. "It is also important to provide more exchange opportunities for people in the humanities and social science fields, in order to get more people to contribute to a wider range of research projects.

Richard Bale, director of the Canadian Trade Office in Taipei, said that academic exchange is not only designed for academics, but also the general public.

"The Taiwan-Canada workshops on Aboriginal rights, constitutional law and the post-SARS health conference, for example, went beyond the academic world and provided some excellent suggestions on issues such as rights of ethnic groups," Bale said.

While the government promotes international exchanges, the number of people who had applied for such opportunities has declined in recent years.

According to statistics from the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics as well as and Executive Yuan, the number of people who applied for foreign student visas in 2003 dropped 22 percent compared to the year before.

By contrast, the number of foreign students in this country totalled 7,844 in 2003, an increase of 22 percent from the year before, the statistics showed.

To encourage more students to study aboard and attract more foreign students to Taiwan, the ministry plans to provide increased funding to universities to set up international programs. It will also encourage Taiwanese professors to offer courses in both Chinese and English, providing foreign students with a more friendly learning environment.

For students who are interested in studying in Canada, the ministry established the "Canada-Taiwan Student Exchange Program" last year, giving 14 students the chance to study at Canadian universities.

The Canadian Trade Office also provides scholarship programs. For more information, visit: http://www.canada.org.tw.
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