A senior Ministry of Education official yesterday said Taiwanese universities should accept the fact that schools will find it increasingly difficult to recruit enough students to fill vacancies.
Asked for comment, Department of Higher Education head Ho Chou-fei (何卓飛), acknowledged the imbalance of “supply and demand” in this year’s university enrollment.
Undergraduate Admissions Commission statistics showed that there are 85,000 vacancies for students this year, while about 83,000 students had filed their school priority list as of Monday.
“Although the number of vacancies has remained the same over the past few years, the number of examinees is decreasing. Therefore, for the first time, the number of available vacancies this year outnumbered that of examinees who filed their school priority list,” commission director Kuo Kun-huang said.
The college entrance system requires students to present the commission a list of academic departments they would like to attend after taking the entrance examination. The commission will determine their admissions in accordance with their examination grades.
The gap between this year’s supply and demand means that some departments may be unable to recruit as many freshmen as they would like or, in the worst cases, fail altogether to recruit any new students.
Ho said the Private School Law (私立學校法) had been amended to allow private universities to reform or merge with other schools.
He said that “market mechanisms” would probably decide which schools or departments needed to be selected out.
He urged universities to ensure the quality of their teaching to attract students, adding that the ministry would also take measures to compel schools that recruit students with lower grades to establish strict requirements to ensure the “quality” of graduates.
The brilliant blue waters, thick foliage and bucolic atmosphere on this seemingly idyllic archipelago deep in the Pacific Ocean belie the key role it now plays in a titanic geopolitical struggle. Palau is again on the front line as China, and the US and its allies prepare their forces in an intensifying contest for control over the Asia-Pacific region. The democratic nation of just 17,000 people hosts US-controlled airstrips and soon-to-be-completed radar installations that the US military describes as “critical” to monitoring vast swathes of water and airspace. It is also a key piece of the second island chain, a string of
A magnitude 5.9 earthquake that struck about 33km off the coast of Hualien City was the "main shock" in a series of quakes in the area, with aftershocks expected over the next three days, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Prior to the magnitude 5.9 quake shaking most of Taiwan at 6:53pm yesterday, six other earthquakes stronger than a magnitude of 4, starting with a magnitude 5.5 quake at 6:09pm, occurred in the area. CWA Seismological Center Director Wu Chien-fu (吳健富) confirmed that the quakes were all part of the same series and that the magnitude 5.5 temblor was
The Central Weather Administration has issued a heat alert for southeastern Taiwan, warning of temperatures as high as 36°C today, while alerting some coastal areas of strong winds later in the day. Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門) and Pingtung County’s Neipu Township (內埔) are under an orange heat alert, which warns of temperatures as high as 36°C for three consecutive days, the CWA said, citing southwest winds. The heat would also extend to Tainan’s Nansi (楠西) and Yujing (玉井) districts, as well as Pingtung’s Gaoshu (高樹), Yanpu (鹽埔) and Majia (瑪家) townships, it said, forecasting highs of up to 36°C in those areas
IN FULL SWING: Recall drives against lawmakers in Hualien, Taoyuan and Hsinchu have reached the second-stage threshold, the campaigners said Campaigners in a recall petition against Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Yen Kuan-heng (顏寬恒) in Taichung yesterday said their signature target is within sight, and that they need a big push to collect about 500 more signatures from locals to reach the second-stage threshold. Recall campaigns against KMT lawmakers Johnny Chiang (江啟臣), Yang Chiung-ying (楊瓊瓔) and Lo Ting-wei (羅廷瑋) are also close to the 10 percent threshold, and campaigners are mounting a final push this week. They need about 800 signatures against Chiang and about 2,000 against Yang. Campaigners seeking to recall Lo said they had reached the threshold figure over the
RSS