Suddenly "knowledge-based economy" has become a hot topic in Taiwan. Broadly speaking, it is impossible to generate economic activity without knowledge. But no one would disagree that innovative technology has become not only an indicator of, but also a source of, a society's wealth in the modern era.
Nations whose labor costs are high, such as the US, or which lack natural resources, such as Sweden, Switzerland and Japan, have long understood that innovative technology is the most crucial basis for the maintenance of competitiveness in the global market. Over the past decades, we have become more aware of how rapidly changing knowledge can influence economic activity, from creating new products and lowering production costs, to using intellectual property rights to win a leading position in industrial development.
The expression, "knowledge creates wealth for society," is not simply a slogan used in academic circles when applying for research funding from the government. Rather, it is a truism which a progressive society ignores at its peril.
When discussing the knowledge-based economy, however, both Taiwan's government and its public simply emphasize hardware, information transmission and the establishment of network databases, completely ignoring the sources of the knowledge capable of producing such an economy. So what kind of knowledge is truly conducive to the development of a modern economy? Quite simply, we cannot create a knowledge-based economy without knowledge. We need to interpret "knowledge" in a new way before we can discuss the economy.
First of all, knowledge is by no means simply information or a means of transmitting information. Knowledge in a knowledge-based economy means not only "new knowledge," but also "those who create, digest and use
knowledge."
It is said that half of the fastest-growing companies in the US are "knowledge-based companies." Instead of producing products or providing services, they sell their employees' knowledge and the techniques used to apply that knowledge.
Hence, talking about a knowledge-based economy without focusing on the creation of new knowledge or the cultivation of talent will achieve nothing. We should therefore examine whether or not Taiwan's higher education system -- the source of knowledge and talented people -- is capable of shouldering the heavy responsibility of establishing a knowledge-based economy.
Taiwan's higher education system currently faces both internal and external problems. On the one hand, we require universities to expand their departments and graduate institutes to enroll more students. The quantity of staff and students is increased, but the issue of improving the quality of provision is completely ignored. The government is being far from generous on the matters of educational funding and the supply of teachers. Taiwan does not have any farsighted plans to foster the creation of knowledge and the cultivation of talent.
On the other hand, the school authorities have lost the power they used to enjoy amid the tide of campus democracy. Academia lacks leaders with vision, and relies instead on endless negotiations and meetings to get things done. Some professional decisions over such matters as resource allocation and priorities for development have been negatively affected by squabbles and ballots.
Flawed reward systems have destroyed the balanced development between research and teaching in universities. Institutions have been eager to pursue a sharp growth in their output of research papers. Though often published in international academic journals, research in Taiwan is frequently of poor quality and little significance. In recent years, young academics have occasionally performed very well, but the number of such fine performances is insufficient to form an abundant source of knowledge to support industrial development.
Most worryingly, these poor quality research papers are the result of a huge effort to focus on research, to the detriment of teaching quality. Students have simply become a cog in the dissertation-production machine. Staff who used constantly to review old curricula and design new ones are now few and far between. With such a higher education system, we can hardly be optimistic about achieving a knowledge-based economy.
Making a knowledge-based economy a priority in government policy is certainly the right thing for the government to do. But we do not see any effective approaches to solving the current problems affecting Taiwan's higher education system. How can we establish a knowledge-based economy without
knowledge?
Chou Cheng-kung is a professor at the Institute of Microbiology and Immunology at National Yang Ming University.
Translated by Jackie Lin
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