The media has reported on the shortcomings of young academics entering the workplace and on proposals that would give students a better understanding of real-life issues in Harvard University's curriculums.
The reports had two things in common. One was the hope that university students could be closer to the real world; the other that their education give them an appreciation of work ethics.
A few years ago, the general manager of Hewlett-Packard said that what industry wants when it hires employees is based on attitude and not professional knowledge.
In my opinion, university education needs major revisions.
The principal things that career education teaches students are work attitude, ethics, work etiquette and adjustment skills in the work environment. Most of the career courses that universities offer belong to mandatory subjects. Most university students study until they have their 128 credits and then graduate.
But career courses constitute only four to six credits at most. Other students only attend a series of lectures on finding work organized by counseling centers and the National Youth Commission. Because of this, the quality of career education at vocational colleges is much lower than that for education in professional knowledge subjects.
I appeal to educational management offices and vocational colleges to carefully review career education and propose the following:
First, on course planning: The general eduction curriculum needs to be re-evaluated. Apart from fixed general education subjects, career education should be improved and we should not be rigid about credits.
Second, on teachers of career courses: Schools should invite leaders and high-level managers from the professional world. These people could talk about the various demands that will be made of students in the workplace based on their experience. This way, students can become more familiar with the work environment while in school.
Third, on arranging courses: Career courses should be spread across different years so that during four years in university, students can hear what they need to know about working before they enter the workplace. This can be complemented by excursions and internships so that students can obtain experience.
Fourth, vocational schools should encourage "work etiquette" campaigns.
Fifth, schools should implement "service studies," or "labor education" as it used to be called. The traditional content of this subject involves students cleaning the campus. The purpose of such activities is that students can develop a work attitude.
Huang Wan-tran is a professor and academic vice president at the Chung Chou Institute of Technology.
Translated by Anna Stiggelbout
After Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) met Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) in Beijing, most headlines referred to her as the leader of the opposition in Taiwan. Is she really, though? Being the chairwoman of the KMT does not automatically translate into being the leader of the opposition in the sense that most foreign readers would understand it. “Leader of the opposition” is a very British term. It applies to the Westminster system of parliamentary democracy, and to some extent, to other democracies. If you look at the UK right now, Conservative Party head Kemi Badenoch is
From the Iran war and nuclear weapons to tariffs and artificial intelligence, the agenda for this week’s Beijing summit between US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is packed. Xi would almost certainly bring up Taiwan, if only to demonstrate his inflexibility on the matter. However, no one needs to meet with Xi face-to-face to understand his stance. A visit to the National Museum of China in Beijing — in particular, the “Road to Rejuvenation” exhibition, which chronicles the rise and rule of the Chinese Communist Party — might be even more revealing. Xi took the members
A Pale View of Hills, a movie released last year, follows the story of a Japanese woman from Nagasaki who moved to Britain in the 1950s with her British husband and daughter from a previous marriage. The daughter was born at a time when memories of the US atomic bombing of Nagasaki during World War II and anxiety over the effects of nuclear radiation still haunted the community. It is a reflection on the legacy of the local and national trauma of the bombing that ended the period of Japanese militarism. A central theme of the movie is the need, at
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) on Friday used their legislative majority to push their version of a special defense budget bill to fund the purchase of US military equipment, with the combined spending capped at NT$780 billion (US$24.78 billion). The bill, which fell short of the Executive Yuan’s NT$1.25 trillion request, was passed by a 59-0 margin with 48 abstentions in the 113-seat legislature. KMT Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文), who reportedly met with TPP Chairman Huang Kuo-chang (黃國昌) for a private meeting before holding a joint post-vote news conference, was said to have mobilized her
RSS