Asia-Pacific Institute of Creativity (APIC) teachers and the Taiwan Higher Education Union yesterday urged the Ministry of Education to not shut down the school until its students graduate, following the resignation of its chairman and president in April.
Yi-shen Group gained control of the school’s assets totaling NT$1.6 billion (US$53.66 million at the current exchange rate) through a NT$1.5 million donation in August 2016, APIC teacher Huang Hui-chih (黃惠芝) said.
Soon after the takeover, the school’s new board, headed by Yi-shen Group chairman Huang Ping-chang (黃平璋), began terminating most of its programs, forcing students to transfer or drop out and illegally cutting teachers’ pay, she said.
In less than two years, enrollment has dropped from 3,000 students to 800, she added.
Since the school’s chairman and president resigned in April, it has suffered from a personnel shortage, Huang Hui-chih said, adding that the ceramic art program now has only one teacher with expertise in the field.
The school last month announced that it could not pay faculty salaries due to a lack of funds, and many worry that the situation will continue for several months, said APIC associate professor Tang Jen-chung (湯仁忠), who has taught at the school for 28 years.
While the majority of the students are to graduate this month, there would still be about 300 who would not graduate until next year or 2020, but the school has already arranged a meeting between teachers and its lawyer to discuss severance packages, he said.
“It is ridiculous that the school wants teachers to leave when there are still students. What will the students do without teachers? How will they complete their education?” union secretary-general Chen Cheng-liang (陳政亮) said.
“If the school must be closed down, the ministry should at least try to minimize the effects on students and teachers,” Chen said. “While students’ right to receive an education must be protected, teachers should be given some time before they are forced to leave.”
According to a 2015 ministry report to the Legislative Yuan’s Education and Culture Committee, students should be allowed to complete their degrees before a school closes, he said.
The school should keep its teachers for as long as the students need them and not try to replace them with part-time instructors, he added.
The school’s assets should be used to keep it functional, Chen said, adding that a lack of cash does not have to lead to immediate closure.
The teachers and the union urged the ministry to pressure the school into keeping teachers on until the students graduate, saying that it should take over the board if necessary.
“This case will be a test of the government’s ability to protect the rights of teachers and students, while properly managing public educational resources before it officially launches its policy on university and college closures and transformation,” Chen said.
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
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
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