The Anti-Commercializing of Education Union, a student group opposed to arbitrary hikes in tuition fees, on Thursday rallied in front of the Ministry of Education to call for amendments to provisions governing tertiary institutes’ tuition fees.
The ministry in June approved requests by 14 institutes to raise tuition fees.
Demonstrators yesterday made three appeals to the ministry: that degree tuition fees be subject to a review by the ministry, that tuition fees for Taiwanese and foreigners be consistent and that school evaluation results not be cited as a pretext for increasing tuition.
National Taiwan University student Lai Pei-lien (賴沛蓮) said that existing provisions do not control tuition fees charged by graduate institutions, which can increase tuition fees after informing the ministry.
Foreigners have equal access to learning resources, but are often required to pay twice as much in tuition fees, which is unfair, Lai said.
She said provisions asking schools to deliver planned tuition hikes to the ministry for review are too lenient and are no different from the ministry’s “invitation” to schools to charge students more.
She said that schools that achieved better results in evaluations should not view raising tuition as a way to reward themselves.
Taiwan Higher Education Union researcher Chen Po-chien (陳伯謙) said that the need for raising tuition fees indicates that the ministry has not invested enough money in higher education.
Department of Higher Education division chief Lee Hui-min (李惠敏) said that a task force including six student representatives has been set in motion to assist in ongoing legislative work to address long-standing problems in existing rules governing tuition fees.
In addition, the ministry has set a 2.5 percent cap on tuition hikes to stop exorbitant tuition fee hikes, she said.
The Taipei Department of Health yesterday said it has launched a probe into a restaurant at Far Eastern Sogo Xinyi A13 Department Store after a customer died of suspected food poisoning. A preliminary investigation on Sunday found missing employee health status reports and unsanitary kitchen utensils at Polam Kopitiam (寶林茶室) in the department store’s basement food court, the department said. No direct relationship between the food poisoning death and the restaurant was established, as no food from the day of the incident was available for testing and no other customers had reported health complaints, it said, adding that the investigation is ongoing. Later
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