National Taiwan University (NTU) will offer the unemployed and people who have been forced to take unpaid leave the chance to take undergraduate or graduate classes for free, although they would have to pay a refundable deposit to demonstrate their commitment.
“[The project] is aimed at [helping] those who are unemployed or on unpaid leave. There will be five openings in each of some 1,100 undergraduate and graduate classes,” university vice president Tang Ming-je (湯明哲) said yesterday.
Qualified applicants could also take professional management classes online, Tang said.
The classes will range from electrical engineering, engineering, management, law, social science to literature, the university said, adding that the program would benefit at least 10,000 people.
“Although the nation’s economic situation has been affected [by the global financial crisis], people who are temporarily unemployed or on unpaid leave should seize the opportunity to pursue advanced studies,” the school said.
Concerned that some participants might not study hard enough, the university decided participants would have to pay a NT$2,000 deposit for each class, Tang said.
“[The minimum pass requirement] in a graduate school class is 70 points [on a scale of one to 100] and 60 points for an undergraduate class. We will issue a certificate of completion if they pass the finals and reimburse their deposits,” Tang said.
Applications for the program will close on Sunday, officials 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
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