Shih Hsin University yesterday said that from September next year it is to stop accepting students in the Graduate Institute for Social Transformation Studies due to low enrollment rates, despite opposition from teachers and students, who threatened protest action.
“Despite being one of the most valued institutes at the university, the graduate school has seen low enrollment rates in the past two school years due to the nation’s declining birthrate,” the university said in a statement.
For two consecutive years, the institute recruited only six new students, with an enrollment rate of only 50 percent, it said.
Photo courtesy of a student at Shih Hsin University’s Graduate Institute for Social Transformation Studies
Moreover, the institute has the lowest graduation rate at the university and a dropout rate more than double the average of all its graduate programs, it said, adding that its performance is “not ideal.”
The university three years ago encouraged the institute to merge with the Department of Social Psychology, but since then no progress has been made, it said.
Since 2012, 15 classes at the university have stopped recruiting students following the same procedures, the university said.
The decision was passed at a university council meeting on Wednesday.
At the meeting, institute professor Hsia Hsiao-chuan (夏曉鵑) said that university regulations require Shih Hsin to evaluate whether to cut a program based on “societal changes, personnel needs, academic development and unique features,” not enrollment rates.
“The proposal [to stop recruiting students] is invalid because it is against regulations,” Hsia said.
Nonetheless, the decision was passed by a council majority.
Following the meeting, a group of the institute’s students burned joss money on campus to protest the planned closure.
“We demand that the university withdraw the decision and we will never stop fighting until it agrees,” students said in a statement issued after the meeting.
They “strongly suspect” the decision was an attempt to retaliate after the institute confronted the university on a wide range of issues, they said.
Institute students have been the university’s fiercest critics for years, having castigated it for overcharging Chinese students for accommodation, arbitrarily firing part-time teachers and abusing budgets, among other things, they said.
“That would explain why the university was so eager to close the institute at the expense of breaching regulations,” they said.
“There are other graduate programs, such as the Chinese program, that have failed to reach enrollment goals for three consecutive years, but the university has not targeted them,” institute student Tzeng Fu-chuan (曾福全) said.
The institute, founded in 1997, combines social theories with activism.
Its alumni include Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Lin Shu-fen (林淑芬) and Taipei Department of Labor Commissioner Lai Hsiang-lin (賴香伶).
Additional reporting by Wu Po-hsuan
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
FLU SEASON: Twenty-six severe cases were reported from Tuesday last week to Monday, including a seven-year-old girl diagnosed with influenza-associated encephalopathy Nearly 140,000 people sought medical assistance for diarrhea last week, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said on Tuesday. From April 7 to Saturday last week, 139,848 people sought medical help for diarrhea-related illness, a 15.7 percent increase from last week’s 120,868 reports, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Lee Chia-lin (李佳琳) said. The number of people who reported diarrhea-related illness last week was the fourth highest in the same time period over the past decade, Lee said. Over the past four weeks, 203 mass illness cases had been reported, nearly four times higher than the 54 cases documented in the same period
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
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: