There were more than 110,000 overseas students enrolled at Taiwanese universities last year, accounting for 8.27 percent of the nation’s university student population, the Ministry of Education said yesterday.
The number of foreign students rose by 16,537 last year to 110,182, according to ministry statistics.
Department of International and Cross-strait Education section head Liu Su-miao (劉素妙) said last year’s surge “caught us by surprise” and she attributed it mainly to 7,000 more Chinese students.
It also reflected more aggressive recruiting efforts overseas by local universities, which have been hit by declining enrollment by Taiwanese students because of the nation’s low birth rate over the past two decades, Liu said.
The figures also show that the ministry’s objective to increase the number of foreign students from 30,000 in 2008 to more than 100,000 this year had been met.
The government’s aim is to turn Taiwan into an “advanced learning powerhouse” in the Asia-Pacific region, Liu said.
Ministry statistics also showed that the number of foreign students pursuing advanced degrees increased by 6,000 last year.
Foreign students mainly come from Malaysia, China, Hong Kong, Macau and Vietnam, in that order.
There was also a sharp increase in the number of students from India, Indonesia and Myanmar, Liu said, adding that her department expects to further diversify its sources of students in the future and hopes to recruit 150,000 foreign students a year by 2021.
The ministry said that Taiwan has built a reputation for having a friendly learning environment after easing regulations on overseas students, offering more scholarships and promoting a counseling system.
The focus now would be to encourage overseas students to remain in Taiwan to work after graduation and give the nation’s private sector more access to overseas graduates, it said.
FLU SEASON: Twenty-six severe cases were reported from Tuesday last week to Monday, including a seven-year-old girl diagnosed with influenza-associated encephalopathy Nearly 140,000 people sought medical assistance for diarrhea last week, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said on Tuesday. From April 7 to Saturday last week, 139,848 people sought medical help for diarrhea-related illness, a 15.7 percent increase from last week’s 120,868 reports, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Lee Chia-lin (李佳琳) said. The number of people who reported diarrhea-related illness last week was the fourth highest in the same time period over the past decade, Lee said. Over the past four weeks, 203 mass illness cases had been reported, nearly four times higher than the 54 cases documented in the same period
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:
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
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