A Ministry of Education draft bill for transitioning and closing private universities lacks safeguards for disposing of school property, the Taiwan Higher Education Union said yesterday, calling for the assets of dissolved schools to be placed in a public higher-education trust.
Numerous private universities are expected to merge or fold in the near future due to declining student numbers, potentially paving the way for massive layoffs of university instructors.
“The ministry is basically giving schools a blank check on how they want to transition,” union chairwoman Liu Mei-chun (劉梅君) said, blasting a ministry proposal to set aside NT$5 billion (US$165 million) in special subsidies for “transitioning” schools, while failing to earmark funds for severance pay.
Photo: Peter Lo, Taipei Times
“After the money is given to schools, it will just disappear, and teachers will only be able to get a hold of their share after long and arduous lawsuits,” she said.
“The Ministry of Education is not willing to shoulder its responsibility to take over the management of struggling schools,” said Su Tzu-hsuan (蘇子軒), the union’s student action committee convener, questioning a ministry proposal to provide “guidance” to schools that fall behind in paying salaries, rather than filing court motions to replace their boards and take direct control.
“The ‘professional guidance’ proposal is a feint because only schools’ founding capital and physical property would be put in trust during the guidance period,” he said, citing bank accounts, special funds and investments of subsidiary organizations as examples of resources over which struggling school boards would retain direct control.
Rights campaigners have expressed concern that school boards might choose to divert school resources rather than pay teachers’ benefits, with Alliance Against the Commercialization of Education member Hsieh Yi-hung (謝毅弘) saying that a survey by his group had found that the nation’s 107 private universities have NT$14.5 billion in bank funds alone.
Su also criticized the ministry’s removal of requirements that school closures be passed by an internal school advisory committee or a consensus after talks with teacher and student representatives.
While there are provisions requiring severance payments for laid-off teachers, there are no rules on how these should be paid out, effectively allowing schools to set the terms, he said.
Union executive secretary Chen Chiung-ting (陳炯廷) called for the property and capital of closed schools to be placed in a public fund, which can be used for improving student-teacher ratios, lowering tuition in the remaining schools and other objectives.
OVERHAUL NEEDED: The government should improve its agricultural processing capabilities and expand to new markets to limit its reliance on China, an expert said China’s ban on Taiwanese pineapples was “unsurprising,” and Taiwan should have years ago altered its produce export strategies and target customers, experts said. China on Friday abruptly suspended imports of pineapples from Taiwan, saying that it had on multiple occasions discovered “harmful biological entities” on the fruit. Calling it an “unfriendly” move, the Council of Agriculture (COA) said that 99.79 percent of the pineapples sent to China since last year have met China’s import standards. Chiao Chun (焦鈞), the author of Fruits and Politics — A Recollection of Cross-strait Agricultural Interaction Over the Past Decade (水果政治學:兩岸農業交流十年回顧與展望), said that China’s announcement is clearly targeting
‘NOT COLD ENOUGH’: Schools are disregarding Premier Su Tseng-chang’s instruction that students may wear out-of-uniform clothing to stay warm, an association said An investigative report revealed that 72.5 percent of the nation’s senior-high schools and 95.6 percent of junior-high schools punish students for wearing unapproved winter clothes in contravention of educational guidelines, lawmakers and student rights advocates said yesterday. Speaking at a news conference at the Legislative Yuan, the Taiwan Youth Association for Democracy said there is an endemic disregard for the Ministry of Education’s regulations and that private schools are more likely to contravene ministry rules. The report is a compilation of 2,856 student reports about dress code reinforcement at 425 high schools and vocational high schools, the association said. Premier Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌)
DECADES OF INFLUENCE: Over the past 20 years, China has made inroads with Aborigines, funding political campaigns and trips, a legislator said Lawmakers have called on the National Security Bureau to investigate claims of pervasive Chinese influence among Aboriginal communities. Legislators pointed to a surge in communist propaganda and Chinese-funded projects over the past few years, which they say are aimed at infiltrating and buying political influence among Aboriginal communities. “China has for decades carried out wide-ranging ‘united front’ tactics and propaganda campaigns targeting Aborigines,” said Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Chen Ying (陳瑩), a member of the Puyuma community in Taitung County. “Now, they are influencing elections for local councilors and village chiefs, offering money for candidates to mount their campaigns, and to
DISSATISFACTION? If the referendums collect more than 700,000 signatures each, they would have gotten the most signatures in the shortest time, the party said The Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) two referendum petitions — one on banning the importation of pork with traces of ractopamine and the other on holding referendums on the same day as national elections — had as of Thursday gathered 691,398 and 674,497 signatures respectively, the party said yesterday. If the petitions collect more than 700,000 signatures apiece, they would have garnered the most signatures in the shortest time since the Referendum Act (公民投票法) was amended in 2017, party officials said. The KMT proposed the “anti-ractopamine pork” or “food safety” referendum just days after President Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) announcement on Aug. 28 last