Taiwanese colleges and universities would attract more foreign students if they had better promotional strategies, a group of international students said yesterday at a Ministry of Education function highlighting efforts to internationalize the nation's education system.
Alexander Blok, 23, from Siberia, Russia, lauded his master's program in international trade at Feng Chia University, saying his educational experience in Taiwan over the past two-and-a-half years has sufficiently prepared him to do business in Asia upon his graduation next June.
"I have been to China several times, but I think Taiwan is the better choice of study because the people are very open and Taiwan, as a country, is very open to the rest of the world," he said.
Blok, speaking in impeccable Mandarin, said he often recommends his friends back home to come study in Taiwan, but added that schools in both countries should do more to raise awareness of the education opportunities available here.
Since 2002, the ministry has launched an initiative to bring more foreign students, academics and teachers to study and teach in Taiwan. Since then, the number of foreign students in Taiwan has leapt from 1,283 to nearly 5,300 for this academic year, Minister of Education Tu Cheng-sheng (杜正勝) said.
"In this era of globalization, internationalization of education has become a crucial aspect. We urge all tertiary education institutions to make recruitment of foreign students and teachers one of their foremost priorities," he said, adding that universities and colleges should also expand foreign language programs to better equip Taiwanese students to compete internationally.
A Swedish student, Theresa Scheidmann, 24, said her industrial engineering and management master's program at National Tsing Hua University (NTHU) had "far exceeded" her expectations.
"I did not know what to expect when I first came, but I have been very pleased with my classes," she said.
Taiwanese education focuses more on memorization, she said, while in Europe students are taught to draw and defend their own conclusions.
However, students in Taiwan also benefit from having more hands-on opportunities to explore their respective fields because of the close collaboration between academic and industrial circles, she said.
She shared Blok's view that more students from Sweden would be interested in studying in Taiwan if they were better informed of the availability.
David Amador, who also studies at NTHU, said he was not aware of the scholarships available in Taiwan until he went to the Taiwan embassy in his native Honduras.
A Hebrew language teacher and master's student at National Cheng Chi University, Dror Weil, said Taiwan should grant more scholarships for specific fields, such as history, rather than just general scholarships.
"Taiwan has many advantages such as the wonderful preservation of different aspects of Chinese culture. Taiwan should really broadcast its advantages in order to appeal to more students," Weil said.
Former president Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) mention of Taiwan’s official name during a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) on Wednesday was likely a deliberate political play, academics said. “As I see it, it was intentional,” National Chengchi University Graduate Institute of East Asian Studies professor Wang Hsin-hsien (王信賢) said of Ma’s initial use of the “Republic of China” (ROC) to refer to the wider concept of “the Chinese nation.” Ma quickly corrected himself, and his office later described his use of the two similar-sounding yet politically distinct terms as “purely a gaffe.” Given Ma was reading from a script, the supposed slipup
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
The bodies of two individuals were recovered and three additional bodies were discovered on the Shakadang Trail (砂卡礑) in Taroko National Park, eight days after the devastating earthquake in Hualien County, search-and-rescue personnel said. The rescuers reported that they retrieved the bodies of a man and a girl, suspected to be the father and daughter from the Yu (游) family, 500m from the entrance of the trail on Wednesday. The rescue team added that despite the discovery of the two bodies on Friday last week, they had been unable to retrieve them until Wednesday due to the heavy equipment needed to lift