A Christian accrediting organization in the US is considering Taiwan's Christ's College (CC) as a candid-ate for full accreditation. Diplomas issued by the college to its grad-uates are still denied recognition by the Ministry of Education (MOE).
Scott Hovater, the newly elected director of the college's English Department, told the Taipei Times that three members of the Transnational Association of Christian Colleges and Schools (TRACS) in the US will visit CC for an inspection and make a recommendation on whether the school should be granted full accreditation.
Hovater was also appointed as a TRACS self-study director to write a critical report on the college.
Upon receiving and authorizing the report, the TRACS office reviewed the study and is now sending a team for a final exam-ination of the college's standards.
"If approved, CC would receive full accreditation in April of 2006," Hovater said.
"As far as I know, we will be the first college in Taiwan to receive accreditation from an accrediting agency in the US," he said.
The college is registered as a "religious school" under the Ministry of the Interior instead of the education ministry.
Requests denied
For the past decade, the ministry had been denying the college's requests to be registered and recognized, saying that it is a religious school which hopes to reserve the right to select its own faculty members and students.
In addition, the education ministry requires that more than half of a college's board must be Taiwanese citizens. The majority of CC's board used to be US cit-izens, but Hovater said that this situation has changed.
Hovater said that too many colleges and not enough students may be another serious concern for the MOE when considering recognizing CC or not.
"The MOE is under pressure to limit the number of institutions it can register. Our argument is that we fill a special need [providing a Christian liberal-arts education, which does not exist elsewhere in Taiwan] and we also pledge to have no more than 1,500 students. Being a small school and fulfilling a need should make the ministry favor our application," Hovater said.
Ministry regulations further stipulate that a college must be situated on 5 hectares of land, and the school currently possesses only 3.2 hectares. CC has been arguing that the college will always be a small college with never more than 1,500 students and so they do not need 5 hectares of land.
Land plan
However, the school eventually compromised and is purchasing land in Sanchih Township (
"We had a meeting with the MOE on Nov. 23, but I am not yet sure whether the ministry will accept our land plan," Hovater said.
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