The Legislative Yuan yesterday passed amendments to the Degree Conferral Act (學位授予法), with one to allow graduate or doctoral students pursuing a degree in sports, the arts or applied science to present their work, certificates and a written report, or a technical report instead of writing a dissertation.
The act previously allowed the exceptions only for graduates seeking an arts or applied-science degree.
The amendments stipulate that the criteria to be met in the work, certificates and reports are to be defined by each university at faculty meetings.
Photo: Liu Hsin-de, Taipei Times
An amendment to the act to allow intercollegiate recognition of credits was also passed.
Universities may confer a degree upon students who have earned enough credits to graduate if they have passed courses in fields related to their major that are offered by colleges other than their own, the amendment stipulates.
The definition of related fields is to be decided by each institute, the amendment says.
Another change to the act would give university students in collaborative internship programs between their university and the private sector the option to suspend their studies and apply for a job as part of an associate degree.
Candidates who are approved according to the policy would need to have studied at a university for two academic years, have earned 80 credits and passed an evaluation, the amendment says.
To earn a bachelor’s degree, students must return to university once the period they applied for to suspend their studies expires, it says.
Meanwhile, penalties for students who have someone else write their thesis have been raised.
Postgraduate students who are found to have gotten another person to write their theses were previously subject to a fine of between NT$200,000 and NT$1 million (US$6,491 and US$32,455), which was collected by the Ministry of Education.
The amendment raised the minimum fine to NT$300,000, while the maximum fine was unchanged.
To complement the new rules, the penalty is also to apply to graduate and doctoral students who present a portfolio, certificates and written report — should any of the items be forged or contain plagiarized information — instead of working on a thesis, with the fine to be collected by their university.
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