National Chengchi University president and Minister of Education appointee Wu Se-hwa (吳思華) yesterday said that while the government’s investment in and support of the business sector are essential to promoting higher education, students also need to “shoulder a basic burden.”
He made the remarks during a radio interview when asked to comment on the increase in college tuition.
Before raising tuition fees, universities must ensure that their spending is transparent and open to scrutiny, and obtain an internal consensus on the issue, he added.
Wu yesterday pledged to improve the new high-school admission system, which has caused widespread complaints among students and parents, as soon as he assumes office today.
The appointee is scheduled to be sworn into his new position today to replace former minister of education Chiang Wei-ling (蔣偉寧), who resigned on July 14 after being linked to a scandal over fake peer reviews of several research papers published by a Taiwanese academic.
Wu yesterday said that the responsibility of a new education minister is not creating a batch of new policies, but allowing the policies that already exist to “return to the basics” to let limited resources produce the most results.
He stressed that the government’s new 12-year education policy would not undergo any major changes in the near future.
Despite widespread criticism against the recently launched high-school admission system, a core feature of the 12-year education program, Wu called the system “passable.”
He said that more than 60 percent of high-school applicants were accepted by their first-choice schools in the first round of exam-free admissions, while most of the remaining students also found suitable schools through special entrance exams.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching