Minister of Education Wu Ching-ji (吳清基) yesterday said he was confident Taiwan and China would sign an educational memorandum of understanding (MOU) by the end of the year.
“The negotiations [on a cross-strait educational MOU] will be concluded by the end of the year. We have not encountered any problems and have established a sound communication mechanism,” Wu said during a question-and-answer session with Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) legislators at the Education and Culture Committee.
The MOU was proposed by the Ministry of Education to resolve the difficulties local universities have encountered in offering joint degrees with universities in China.
A number of Taiwanese universities, including National Taiwan University (NTU), have been discussing launching joint-degree programs with schools in China, starting in February next year.
Under the programs, Chinese students who have completed freshman and sophomore courses in China would be allowed to continue their third and fourth years of college education in schools in Taiwan. By the time they graduate, they would receive bachelor’s degrees offered by both the Taiwanese and the Chinese universities.
A similar arrangement would be made for Taiwanese students.
However, local universities have run into complications during talks on the matter.
One problem, for example, is that while in Taiwan bachelor’s degrees are conferred by universities, in China the degrees are awarded by the Ministry of Education.
Taiwanese students who participate in the program might not be able to receive their Chinese diplomas by the time they graduate if the Chinese Ministry of Education does not agree, for one reason or another, to award the degrees.
Vice Minister of Education Lin Tsong-ming (林聰明) told reporters on the sidelines of the committee meeting that education ministries on both sides of the Strait needed to discuss mechanisms to protect the rights of Taiwanese and Chinese students.
NTU president Lee Si-chen (李嗣涔) called on the ministry to begin the talks as soon as possible to help local universities proceed with their plans.
NTU is currently discussing joint-degree programs with Shanghai’s Fudan University and Beijing’s Peking University and Tsinghua University.
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