The Ministry of Education on Friday said it would suspend continuing education courses at some higher-education institutions on its watchlist from the new semester, which begins in August.
Eight institutions failed to achieve an enrollment rate of at least 60 percent for the previous academic year — from August 2017 to June last year — with Fortune Institute of Technology, Huafan University, and Nan Jeon University of Science and Technology having fewer than 3,000 students, ministry statistics showed.
The eight institutions are Huafan in New Taipei City, Hsuan Chuang University in Hsinchu County, Mingdao University and Chung Chou University of Science and Technology in Changhua County, Kao Yuan University and Fortune in Kaohsiung, Nan Jeon in Tainan and Chungyu University of Film and Arts in Keelung.
Amendments to the Guidelines on Continued Education Offered by Higher Education Institutions (專科以上學校辦理繼續教育辦法) say that such institutions are to be barred from offering continuing education courses unless their enrollment improves.
Other reasons that would lead to restrictions from offering the courses include severe debt, serious financial difficulty, three months of unpaid employees’ salaries, unwarranted salary reductions, employment of unapproved staff, failing a ministry evaluation or being placed on the watchlist.
Department of Technological and Vocational Education Director Yang Yu-hui (楊玉惠) said that institutes that are found to provide poor education would not be allowed to offer continuing education courses and the ministry filed an injunction banning them from doing so.
The watchlist would be published after the Legislative Yuan passes a private school transformation and closure bill, Yang said.
Meanwhile, National Sun Yat-sen University president Cheng Ying-yao (鄭英耀) has proposed a merger with Kaohsiung Medical University, a private institution.
If successful, it would be the nation’s first merger between a public university and a private one.
Commenting on legal technicalities facing such a merger — which would be classified as a “private foundation” — Cheng called on the ministry to relax regulations, saying that integrating their resources would leverage the research capacity of higher education, creating in a win-win situation for the institutions and the nation.
However, Kaohsiung Medical said the proposed merger needs careful deliberation, while existing collaborative programs between the two have greatly leveraged education quality for both.
The ministry has expressed support for public-private mergers, but proposals by Minister of Education Pan Wen-chung (潘文忠) that the private institution turn over half the seats on its board of directors to its public counterpart and that the entity be a foundation are considered difficult to realize.
A possible solution would be to have separate management for education and business affairs in such a merger.
Association of Private Universities and Colleges of Technology, Taiwan director-general Tang Yan-po (唐彥伯) said the government is unlikely to certify faculty members at private institutions as public teachers, as that would increase government spending.
If a public-private merger happens, faculty from private institutions would probably still be covered by their existing pensions, which would pose the problem of “one school, two systems,” Tang said.
Shih Chien University president Michael Chen (陳振貴) said he is optimistic about public-private mergers, as they would offer private institutions facing closure a way out.
Additional reporting by Weng Yu-huang and Huang Hsu-lei
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
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,
LIKE FAMILY: People now treat dogs and cats as family members. They receive the same medical treatments and tests as humans do, a veterinary association official said The number of pet dogs and cats in Taiwan has officially outnumbered the number of human newborns last year, data from the Ministry of Agriculture’s pet registration information system showed. As of last year, Taiwan had 94,544 registered pet dogs and 137,652 pet cats, the data showed. By contrast, 135,571 babies were born last year. Demand for medical care for pet animals has also risen. As of Feb. 29, there were 5,773 veterinarians in Taiwan, 3,993 of whom were for pet animals, statistics from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency showed. In 2022, the nation had 3,077 pediatricians. As of last
XINJIANG: Officials are conducting a report into amending an existing law or to enact a special law to prohibit goods using forced labor Taiwan is mulling an amendment prohibiting the importation of goods using forced labor, similar to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) passed by the US Congress in 2021 that imposed limits on goods produced using forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. A government official who wished to remain anonymous said yesterday that as the US customs law explicitly prohibits the importation of goods made using forced labor, in 2021 it passed the specialized UFLPA to limit the importation of cotton and other goods from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur region. Taiwan does not have the legal basis to prohibit the importation of goods