Civic groups led by the Youth Synergy Taiwan Foundation yesterday accused the government of unfair allocation of resources for the country’s higher education system and turning young people across the country into a “lost generation.”
On Youth Day yesterday, representatives from youth and labor groups voiced their concerns about the future of the leaders of tomorrow, who they say face a number of difficulties, from structural problems in the public and private education system to an overheated real estate market that makes owning a home next to impossible.
The groups cited statistics that showed 815,000 people applied for subsidized tuition loans last year, with the average aid-receiving student borrowing roughly NT$400,000. Graduates with a bachelor’s degree or above can expect to spend an average of 29 weeks looking for a job, with a low average -starting salary of NT$24,000.
“Many students are burdened with heavy loans from the time they graduate, even before they have earned a cent,” former National Youth Commission chairwoman Cheng Li-chun (鄭麗君) said. “Combined with falling starting salaries and a longer period of unemployment at graduation, the future of our nation’s youth is filled with uncertainty.”
Cheng said that only 20 percent of students from low-income -families attend public universities, while the rest have to pay costly tuition fees for private education.
Because public universities are more selective, those who can afford to go to cram schools have a better chance of squeezing into a top-ranking university, while those who are less fortunate are forced to turn to private education, where the quality is highly variable, she said.
The groups also pointed to worsening labor conditions, despite official government statistics showing an improved job market. Currently, 923,000 people are employed as temporary, dispatch or contract workers.
“One out of every four working youths is employed as a temporary, part-time or dispatch worker, face uncertainty about job stability and receive little in the way of employee benefits,” Cheng said.
The groups also said it is almost impossible to buy a home using regular salaries alone. If an average home buyer pays NT$7 million (US$233,000) for a home, someone who started working at the age of 25 would not be able to afford to buy a house until he or she was 56 years old. Someone living in Taipei would not be able to afford a home until the age of 69, the groups said.
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