The number of Taiwanese with a college, university or other type of higher education degree has increased every year to 39 percent of the population in 2009, statistics released by the Ministry of the Interior showed on Saturday.
Compared with other countries, Taiwan’s higher-education population is higher than the average of 30 percent of Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development member states.
It ties with South Korea’s 39 percent, but is lower than Japan’s 44 percent, the findings show.
Taiwan’s higher-education population also is lower than Canada’s 49 percent, the US’ 41 percent and New Zealand’s 40 percent.
However, it is higher than Germany’s 26 percent of the population, Britain’s 37 percent, France’s 30 percent, Switzerland’s 35 percent, Norway’s 37 percent and Sweden’s 33 percent.
The statistics on the education level of people over 15 years of age show that by the end of last year, 38.2 percent of such Taiwanese were holders of degrees from colleges or universities, while 32.3 percent were high school or vocational high-school graduates.
About 7.53 million Taiwanese had completed their higher education as of Dec. 31 last year, Ministry officials said.
The percentage of people in Taiwan who have obtained a higher education degree has increased by 15.2 percentage points over the past 10 years amid a drop in the illiterate population, which fell to 1.8 percent at the end of last year, officials said.
In terms of demographics, 28.7 percent of Taiwanese men aged above 40 completed higher education, while 20 percent of Taiwanese women older than 40 completed higher education.
However, the percentage of women younger than 40 years old and with a degree reached 57.2 percent, higher than the 53.3 percent of men in the same age group holding a degree, government statistics show.
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
LIKE FAMILY: People now treat dogs and cats as family members. They receive the same medical treatments and tests as humans do, a veterinary association official said The number of pet dogs and cats in Taiwan has officially outnumbered the number of human newborns last year, data from the Ministry of Agriculture’s pet registration information system showed. As of last year, Taiwan had 94,544 registered pet dogs and 137,652 pet cats, the data showed. By contrast, 135,571 babies were born last year. Demand for medical care for pet animals has also risen. As of Feb. 29, there were 5,773 veterinarians in Taiwan, 3,993 of whom were for pet animals, statistics from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency showed. In 2022, the nation had 3,077 pediatricians. As of last
XINJIANG: Officials are conducting a report into amending an existing law or to enact a special law to prohibit goods using forced labor Taiwan is mulling an amendment prohibiting the importation of goods using forced labor, similar to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) passed by the US Congress in 2021 that imposed limits on goods produced using forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. A government official who wished to remain anonymous said yesterday that as the US customs law explicitly prohibits the importation of goods made using forced labor, in 2021 it passed the specialized UFLPA to limit the importation of cotton and other goods from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur region. Taiwan does not have the legal basis to prohibit the importation of goods