The Ministry of Education should stop passively approving applications from universities to fire teachers, members of the Taiwan Higher Education Union said yesterday, calling for proactive consideration and investigation into teachers’ charges of administrative misconduct.
About 20 union representatives stood outside the gates of the ministry building to demonstrate against its handling of layoffs caused by falling student numbers.
“[The ministry] has totally failed to consider the views of teachers [during the approval process],” National Chengchi University law professor Lin Chia-ho (林佳和) said. “It just goes through a checklist to see if the universities have submitted all the necessary paperwork.”
The ministry’s “check the boxes” approach has led to administrative abuses by universities, with a teacher’s attendance at a meeting considered adequate evidence that their opinions had been taken into consideration during the layoff process, he said.
“Many teachers have been fired for unreasonable reasons,” he said. “The ministry’s position has been that it does not need to review the reason so long as the teachers were present [at internal university meetings], but that is not the point — the point is that teachers should have the right to defend themselves against any reasons cited for their dismissal.”
Protesters alleged university manipulation of the “grading” system for instructor performance to guarantee a certain number of instructors are forced out.
Performance standards are arbitrarily adjusted at short notice, giving universities discretion over who fails and should be fired, protesters said.
A Taipei College of Maritime Technology professor surnamed Chen (陳) said that due to last-minute changes to last year’s grading system more than 70 percent of the university’s professors “failed,” forcing the school to take extraordinary measures to adjust grades to cut the number of professors fired.
While the university has refused to release information on how the grades were adjusted, different levels of “extra credit” points arbitrarily assigned by the university president appeared on many professors’ grade sheets, he said.
Union representatives also protested against the ministry’s allowing universities to include sections on student recruitment targets and corporate fundraising in teacher evaluations.
“Because universities are under a lot of pressure with many facing bankruptcy, they think they can corral their ‘human resources’ into helping them solve their financial problems,” National Taiwan University of Science and Technology electronic engineering professor Chen Chih-hsiao (陳致曉) said.
The short length of the window teachers are allowed before they are subjected to tenure review, alongside the need to raise research money and patent licensing fees has turned academics into “slave labor” and the “tools” of corporations, making it impossible for them to pursue their long-term research goals, he said.
In response, the ministry’s vocational education division deputy head Jao Pang-an (饒邦安) said the ministry allows laid-off teachers to present their cases to the ministry’s review panel, temporarily halting the process until the opinions of affected instructors can be taken into consideration.
Universities have a right to add criteria other than research and teaching to their own grading standards for teachers under the University Act (大學法), he said.
Vocational education division head Lee Yan-yi (李彥儀) said that while universities can require that professors help recruit students, setting explicit individual recruitment targets would be viewed as inappropriate.
The ministry stated that the firing of fewer than 10 teachers was under review so far this year.
NATIONAL SECURITY: Authorities are working to confirm the identities of the military personnel involved and investigating possible illegal conduct and regulatory violations Authorities are probing possible national security implications after Kinmen police and immigration officers on Sunday found a Chinese woman allegedly posing as a tourist while engaging in prostitution involving more than 10 military personnel. The woman, surnamed Chen (陳), has since been deported, authorities said, adding that investigators are still working to confirm the identities of those implicated, as the records only listed code names and aliases. The case stemmed from a report received by the Kinmen District Prosecutors’ Office on Friday last week from the Jinhu Precinct of the Kinmen County Police Bureau. On Sunday, police, along with the National Immigration
GLOBALGIVING: ‘ Caving to external pressure is not acceptable for an organization that has cultivated justice reform and human rights for 30 years,’ one NGO said A slew of non-government organizations (NGOs) have withdrawn from the GlobalGiving fundraising platform after it announced it would use “Chinese Taipei” instead of “Taiwan” from next month. The Taiwan Good Rice Association wrote on Facebook on Friday that it was informed on April 28 via a teleconference call of the change, which was made because the platform wanted to operate in China. Taiwan Good Rice is to terminate all cooperative relationships with GlobalGiving in response to the platform’s “unilateral and non-negotiable” decision to remove references to Taiwan, the NGO said. “Taiwan is in the official name of Taiwan Good Rice Association and the
HEAVY WEATHER: Typhoon Jangmi is due to crash straight into the Ryukyus as airlines look to shift flights to larger aircraft or cancel flights to Okinawa entirely Taiwan’s international air carriers announced flight adjustments over the weekend as Typhoon Jangmi is forecast to hit the Ryukyu Islands today and tomorrow. The Central Weather Administration (CWA) upgraded Jangmi from a tropical storm to a typhoon at 8am yesterday, with the eye located 580km south of Naha city. It was moving north at 19kph. Today, China Airlines’ CI-120, CI-121, CI-122 and CI-123 flights between Taoyuan and Naha, Okinawa, have been canceled as well as CI-132 and CI-133 between Kaohsiung and Naha. EVA Air’s BR-112, BR-113, BR-186 and BR-185 flights between Taoyuan and Naha are also canceled. Low-cost carrier Tigerair Taiwan canceled IT-230,
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) yesterday briefed her party’s Central Standing Committee regarding her scheduled visit to the US between Monday next week and June 16, saying that her purpose would be to persuade the US that the Republic of China (ROC) Constitution was a “one China” constitution that would foster stable and peaceful cross-strait relations. The ROC Constitution is the most important defense for all Taiwanese citizens, as it upholds our democracy and has contributed to our robust economy, which aligns with international and US interests, she said. “We would not be troublemakers and drag the US under,”
RSS