A proposed subsidy program aimed at retaining top academics would provide special staffing funds to school and research facilities and give selected academics up to NT$5 million (US$164,968) per year for a three-year period, Minister of Education Pan Wen-chung (潘文忠) said yesterday.
With the nation facing a severe brain drain and intense international competition for academics, the Ministry of Education’s (MOE) the “Yushan Project” would be aimed at keeping top Taiwanese and foreign academics working in Taiwan from leaving, Pan said after making a formal report on the plan at an Executive Yuan meeting.
There are three parts to the project, which the ministry plans to launch next year: the selection of 500 Taiwanese and 500 foreign “Yushan Scholars,” a staffing fund for schools and research facilities, and a 10 percent hike in the research pay of full-time professors, Pan said.
Photo: Lin Hsiao-yun, Taipei Times
The academics would be chosen within three years of the start of the project, and each would hold the title of Yushan Scholar for a three-year period, during which time they would be entitled to a bonus — based on their annual salary and rank — of up to NT$5 million per year, Pan said.
A special NT$2 billion annual fund for payrolls would be provided to schools and research facilities to pay additional bonuses to current employees and hire young applicants, he said, adding that the program, which would benefit about 19,000 academics, is projected to cost NT$5.6 billion per year to implement.
The ministry is set to hold four panels, including one yesterday, to discuss the proposal.
Critics have said the project concentrates limited resources on a select few and creates an imbalance between established academics and younger ones.
Responding to the criticism, Pan said: “The project will select both established scholars and young and upcoming academics, without focusing on a particular age group.”
“It will address the needs of different academic disciplines without overemphasizing the scientific ones,” he added.
“Performance will be the top priority in the selection of Yushan scholars, so academics, whether from China or other countries, enrolled in the project will have to produce academic results,” he said.
However, even Premier Lin Chuan (林全) appears to be among those who have doubts about the proposal.
Saying the three-year limit on the additional funding for “Yushan Scholars” might not be a stable enough incentive for international academics, he urged the ministry to boost complementary measures.
He also encouraged the ministry to communicate with critics of the project about the selection criteria and ordered it to revise the university salary system as a way to help retain academic talents and bolster the nation’s competitiveness.
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