The results of last year’s university evaluations were released last Monday and while no school failed, the survey should make for uncomfortable reading for everyone from President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) to the Ministry of Education to parents and college students.
The Higher Education Evaluation and Accreditation Council of Taiwan (HEEACT) surveyed 243 departments and graduate institutes at nine universities — including National Taiwan University and National Chung Cheng University — in the second half of last year. Twenty-seven departments and graduate programs were placed on the ministry’s watch list, and 70 percent of those 27 were graduate programs.
The council’s chief executive officer, Roger Chen (陳振遠), said 27 lacked adequate teaching staff, in part because those on the watchlist have been freezing faculty recruitment in response to the declining birth rate or asked different departments or institutes to jointly hire teachers. The freeze has placed an excessive burden on the schools’ regular teaching staff and affects teaching quality, Chen said.
It sounds reasonable for schools to tighten their belts while the ministry refuses to lift its freeze, given increasing difficulties in filling student spaces. However, cutting back on faulty recruitment also means denying students the opportunity to meet and learn from someone who may prove to be a great inspiration and help them reach their full potential.
In his New Year’s speech last year, Ma spoke of the importance of cultivating talented Taiwanese because “human resources are Taiwan’s most valuable assets and the basis for the nation’s competitiveness in a knowledge-based economy.”
In 2007, when he was running for president, Ma supported increasing education expenditure from about NT$500 billion (US$15.5 billion) a year to more than NT$700 billion by 2016. He promised to invest in the renewal of campus facilities, free kindergarten for children over five years of age, free school lunches for elementary and junior-high school students from low-income families and to develop universities and colleges with special features.
Ma’s running mate, now Vice President Vincent Siew (蕭萬長), told a Teachers of the Year award ceremony in 2007 that the government could cut back on anything but educational expenditure.
Politicians and educators have frequently proclaimed their ambition to make the nation’s universities more internationally competitive, both to benefit the schools by attracting more foreign students and the nation by producing graduates able to compete with the best in the world.
“If we refuse to make changes, great teachers and students will be gone and it will be more difficult for us to raise competitiveness,” Ma said in November last year in one of his weekly online speeches.
The HEEACT evaluations highlight the growing problem of a lack of qualified staff at some top schools. Our leaders know how important it is to educate and cultivate the nation’s best and brightest, but it is not enough to simply acknowledge that importance.
Staying economically competitive takes more than just a trade pact or two. It takes skilled personnel at all levels.
If the government is serious about the economy and education then this teaching gap must be tackled as soon as possible — by providing the funding and resources needed to keep our schools performing at their peak. Speeches and pretty words alone won’t do it.
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