Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Kuan Bi-ling (管碧玲) said yesterday that to avoid a brain drain, the government should set a limit on the number of Taiwanese allowed to study in China after its policy to recognize Chinese college degrees comes into force.
Speaking at the legislature’s Education and Culture Committee, Kuan said that Premier Wu Den-yih’s (吳敦義) son has a doctorate in law from China’s Tsinghua University.
“This proves that holding a degree from a Chinese university is seen as valuable. If the country recognizes Chinese certificates, many students will be tempted to go to China,” Kuan said.
The Government Information Office said in a press release yesterday that while Wu’s eldest son has studied at Tsinghua University in Beijing, it is not true that his second son earned a master’s degree in China.
“It is the government’s declared policy to recognize educational qualifications from China. It would be far-fetched to claim that the policy is made to serve specific people,” the letter said.
Kuan told Vice Minister of Education Lin Tsung-ming (林聰明) that the government should raise the matter during cross-strait talks between the Straits Exchange Foundation (SEF) and the Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Strait.
“The government said it would set a series of restrictions on Chinese students who want to study in Taiwan to avoid jeopardizing the education system. Likewise, the SEF should ask China to set some conditions. For example, it shouldn’t offer lucrative scholarships to attract Taiwanese students,” Kuan said.
The Ministry of Education announced on Monday that it would hold 17 seminars around Taiwan from tomorrow until Dec. 23 to explain the government’s plan to recognize Chinese diplomas and open tertiary education institutes to Chinese students.
A ministry spokesman said the first seminar would be held in Kaohsiung and the last in Taipei.
He said the ministry was planning to gradually recognize diplomas issued by more than 100 elite Chinese universities in three stages — 41 top universities in the first stage, 55 in the second stage and an as-yet undecided number in the third stage. Police and military higher education institutes would be excluded.
In addition, he said, the ministry was considering making the policy retroactive to 1997, but would pay attention to public opinion on the matter, as there fears that the measure could affect the local job market.
The ministry has said that Chinese graduates must leave the country within a month of completing their studies and would not be permitted to work in Taiwan.
In terms of the maximum number of Chinese students allowed to pursue studies in Taiwan, the ministry said the number will be about 1 percent of the total number of every year’s freshman intake, or about 2,000 annually.
Each university would be authorized to have a maximum of 2 percent of Chinese students enrolled at any one time.
The ministry intends to allow Chinese graduate students to pursue master’s courses at public universities, while private universities will only be permitted to enroll undergraduates.
ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY CNA
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