Vice President Vincent Siew (蕭萬長) said yesterday that the government plans to recruit top professors by offering globally competitive wages as well as attract more international students as part of its effort to promote globalization.
Speaking at a national conference on nurturing talent, Siew said the government would step up its investment in education and increase the education budget each year.
The government will also recruit more international students by touting Taiwan's advantages in advanced education to other Southeast Asian nations, he said.
“The government will map out a comprehensive plan for nurturing, retaining and recruiting talent,” Siew said.
Globalization means every country is striving to recruit the best talent, he said, mentioning China, Hong Kong, Singapore and South Korea.
“Although Taiwan lacks natural resources, it has a wealth of outstanding talent,” Siew said.
The key to nation building is the government's ability to retain top human resources, whether locally or overseas trained, he said.
The government will take into consideration education, population and industrial policies as part of the process of charting the nation's development, the vice president said.
The plan will be designed on the basis of short, medium and long-term human resource needs, he said.
Meanwhile, the Ministry of Education introduced a draft plan on recruiting and retaining top-quality university professors.
Under the proposal, the salaries of professors could be subsidized by the ministry's five-year allocation of NT$50 billion (US$1.56 billion) for the development of top-class universities, from special projects or from the National Science Council (NSC).
There will also be no cap on the pay offered, the proposal states.
“Allowing flexible salaries will help attract top teaching talent and boost Taiwan's international competitiveness,” NSC Minister Lee Lou-chuang (李羅權) said. “Taiwan cannot afford to be excluded from the world trend of recruiting the best talent.”
National Cheng Kung University president Michael Lai (賴明詔) agreed, saying the “salaries of Taiwan's teaching and research personnel are too low.”
“A salary increase will help attract the best,” Lai said. “Salary flexibility is crucial, although it will by no means suggest an across-the-board pay raise.”
The 150 representatives at the conference at the National Central Library also included Academia Sinica President Wong Chi-huey (翁啟惠), Delta Electronics founder and chairman Bruce Cheng (鄭崇華), Minister of Education Wu Ching-chi (吳清基) and the presidents of several universities.
Taiwanese were praised for their composure after a video filmed by Taiwanese tourists capturing the moment a magnitude 7.5 earthquake struck Japan’s Aomori Prefecture went viral on social media. The video shows a hotel room shaking violently amid Monday’s quake, with objects falling to the ground. Two Taiwanese began filming with their mobile phones, while two others held the sides of a TV to prevent it from falling. When the shaking stopped, the pair calmly took down the TV and laid it flat on a tatami mat, the video shows. The video also captured the group talking about the safety of their companions bathing
US climber Alex Honnold is to attempt to scale Taipei 101 without a rope and harness in a live Netflix special on Jan. 24, the streaming platform announced on Wednesday. Accounting for the time difference, the two-hour broadcast of Honnold’s climb, called Skyscraper Live, is to air on Jan. 23 in the US, Netflix said in a statement. Honnold, 40, was the first person ever to free solo climb the 900m El Capitan rock formation in Yosemite National Park — a feat that was recorded and later made into the 2018 documentary film Free Solo. Netflix previewed Skyscraper Live in October, after videos
Starting on Jan. 1, YouBike riders must have insurance to use the service, and a six-month trial of NT$5 coupons under certain conditions would be implemented to balance bike shortages, a joint statement from transportation departments across Taipei, New Taipei City and Taoyuan announced yesterday. The rental bike system operator said that coupons would be offered to riders to rent bikes from full stations, for riders who take out an electric-assisted bike from a full station, and for riders who return a bike to an empty station. All riders with YouBike accounts are automatically eligible for the program, and each membership account
A classified Pentagon-produced, multiyear assessment — the Overmatch brief — highlighted unreported Chinese capabilities to destroy US military assets and identified US supply chain choke points, painting a disturbing picture of waning US military might, a New York Times editorial published on Monday said. US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s comments in November last year that “we lose every time” in Pentagon-conducted war games pitting the US against China further highlighted the uncertainty about the US’ capability to intervene in the event of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan. “It shows the Pentagon’s overreliance on expensive, vulnerable weapons as adversaries field cheap, technologically
RSS