A majority of people believe the Ministry of Education’s refusal to confirm Kuan Chung-ming’s (管中閔) election as National Taiwan University (NTU) president has tarnished the government’s image and could prompt an exodus of higher education talent, a poll released yesterday by the Grassroots Influence Foundation found.
Kuan was on Jan. 5 elected NTU president and was scheduled to take office on Feb. 1. However, the ministry put off approval of his appointment amid allegations of plagiarism, a conflict of interest and a flawed selection process.
The controversy led to the resignation of former minister of education Pan Wen-chung (潘文忠).
After Pan’s successor, Wu Maw-kuen (吳茂昆), took office on April 19, the ministry on April 27 rejected Kuan’s election on the grounds that the election process was flawed, and asked NTU to hold a new election.
Wu resigned on Tuesday.
Of the survey’s respondents, 43.2 percent said they disagreed with the ministry using Kuan’s status as an independent director of Taiwan Mobile to reject his election, while 13 percent agreed.
A total of 52.2 percent said the ministry’s handling of the issue has “seriously” undermined university autonomy, while 8 percent disagreed.
The incident could lead to an exodus of higher education talent, 49.8 percent of respondents said, while 13.9 percent said they were not convinced that such a scenario would occur.
A total of 41.4 percent said the ministry’s directive that all universities disclose whether any of their faculty have illegally taught in China has encroached on academic freedom, while 10.1 percent said it has not.
A total of 64.4 percent of respondents said the Kuan incident has “seriously” tarnished the government’s image, compared with 5.7 percent who said it has not.
Those who said that NTU’s image has been hurt by the incident accounted for 47.6 percent of those surveyed, while 13.3 percent who said it has not.
Overall, 47.3 percent of respondents disagreed with the ministry’s decision to reject Kuan’s election, while 10.3 percent agreed.
The poll collected 1,100 valid samples and has a margin of error of 2.95 percentage points.
The incident highlights that NTU’s electoral system is flawed, NTU College of Public Health adjunct professor King Chwan-chuen (金傳春) said at the news conference to share the survey’s results.
As the incident has caused two education ministers to resign, the government would have a hard time finding a new education minister until everything is settled, Taiwan Competitiveness Forum chief executive officer Hsieh Ming-hui (謝明輝) said.
The government should give Acting Minister of Education Yao-Leeh-ter (姚立德) the authority to confirm Kuan’s appontment, Hsieh said, adding that it could otherwise result in “double trouble” — the absence of both an NTU president and an education minister.
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