Overseas compatriots from Southeast Asia who come to Taiwan to continue their education are more likely to drop out of school than Taiwanese compatriots from other parts of the world, the Ministry of Education said yesterday.
Statistics released by the ministry’s Overseas Compatriot Educational Committee showed that a total of 628 Taiwanese -compatriots studying in Taiwan temporarily suspended their schooling and 631 dropped out of school in the past academic year.
Among those who decided to temporarily suspend their education, 151 were from Myanmar, 107 from Malaysia and 81 from Thailand, the statistics showed.
In proportional terms, the students from Thailand and Myanmar had high dropout rates. Of the 355 compatriots from Thailand who come for study, 22.82 percent chose to suspend their studies, while 15.6 percent of the 968 compatriots from Myanmar suspended their education.
A similar phenomenon was also observed in terms of the number of compatriots from Southeast Asia who applied for a permanent withdrawal in the past academic year.
The statistics showed that 143 of the 968 compatriots from Myanmar decided to drop out of school, while 119 of the 3,604 compatriots from Malaysia also quit school.
In percentage terms, those from Thailand topped the list of compatriots who dropped out of school in the past school year, with 15.77 percent of the 355 people from Thailand terminating their schooling, followed by compatriots from Myanmar with a 14.77 percent dropout rate.
Yang Wen-chie (楊文傑), a member of the Thai-Myanmar Region Chinese Offspring Refugee Service Association, wrote in an article posted on the associations Web blog that the high dropout rate among compatriots from Myanmar had been a recurrent problem in local colleges and universities.
Yang attributed the high dropout rate to poverty, difficulties they may have in adapting to life in Taiwan and the fact that Taiwanese credentials remain unrecognized in Myanmar.
Yang called on the government to lower the dropout rate by providing more scholarships to Taiwanese compatriots from Myanmar and allowing them to take student loans.
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