Media reports about a graduate from the Department of Economics at Tsing Hua University who went to Australia to work as a “Taiwanese migrant worker” (台勞) have become a source of much debate recently. In my view, the source of the problem with Taiwanese students having to go abroad to work is that for the past two decades, the educational system has only focused on productivity, while ignoring dedication and enthusiasm for teaching, and this has caused both teachers and students to lose sight of the overall goal of education.
Toward the end of the 1980s, a series of educational reforms were implemented that resulted in demands to improve the quality of higher education. There was nothing wrong with the idea, but the approach that was adopted by the educational administration was to set up a series of quantitative benchmarks by which it could judge the quality of education.
Some examples of these reforms are the demand that institutions of higher learning should increase the proportion of teachers holding a doctoral degree and the proportion of teachers at the level of assistant professor and above, encouraging the elevation of specialized technical institutes to university level, establishing a system for teacher evaluation and making the number of articles published in Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI) and Science Citation Index (SCI) journals the standard for promotions and evaluating National Science Council (NSC) program applications. Such absurd measures for evaluating educational quality using quantitative benchmarks also called Key Performance Indicators, or KPIs — were continuously introduced.
The education administration system also includes many other strange ideas and methods, such as determining whether teachers show concern for their students by looking at interview records and how many interviews a teacher has had with students, evaluating whether or not they are thorough in their teaching by looking at whether there is a syllabus and the number of assessments and determining whether a teacher connects with industry by looking at the number of projects operated jointly with industry.
As a result, each term teachers are busy planning lessons for every class, holding interviews with students, visiting students living in dormitories and their place of work, submitting NSC program applications, trying to set up joint projects with industry, promoting their school, getting training at companies, writing articles for publication in SCI or SSCI journals and so on.
Every benchmark is geared toward measuring a teacher’s productivity, and in addition, there are never-ending teacher evaluations. However, none of these benchmarks can measure a teacher’s dedication and enthusiasm for teaching.
The education administration system should return the right of education to the teachers and their students, cut down on the influence of quantitative benchmarks on the quality of education — after maintaining these benchmarks for a period to give schools time to adapt — lower the frequency of teacher evaluations and replace process management with goal management.
We can learn how to guarantee and maintain educational quality by managing educational goals instead of by interfering at every step of the educational process.
Let teachers concentrate on teaching, and let students concentrate on learning.
Feng Kuo-hao is associate professor and chairman of the Department of Public Relations and Advertising at Kun Shan University.
Translated by Perry Svensson
Recently, the Liberty Times (the Taipei Times’ sister newspaper) published three of my articles on the US presidential election, which is to be held on Nov. 5. I would like to share my perspective on the intense and stalemated presidential election with the people of Taiwan, as well as Taiwanese and Chinese Americans in the US. The current consensus of both major US political parties is to counter China and protect Taiwan. However, I do not trust former US president Donald Trump. He has questioned the US’ commitment to defending Taiwan and explicitly stated the significant challenges involved in doing so. “Trump believes
China has successfully held its Forum on China-Africa Cooperation, with 53 of 55 countries from the African Union (AU) participating. The two countries that did not participate were Eswatini and the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic, which have no diplomatic relations with China. Twenty-four leaders were reported to have participated. Despite African countries complaining about summit fatigue, with recent summits held with Russia, Italy, South Korea, the US and Indonesia, as well as Japan next month, they still turned up in large numbers in Beijing. China’s ability to attract most of the African leaders to a summit demonstrates that it is still being
The government is considering building a semiconductor cluster in Europe, specifically in the Czech Republic, to support Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co’s (TSMC) new fab in Dresden, Germany, and to help local companies explore new business opportunities there. Europe wants to ensure the security of its semiconductor sector, but a lack of comprehensive supply chains there could pose significant risks to semiconductor clusters. The Czech government is aggressively seeking to build its own semiconductor industry and showing strong interest in collaborating with Taiwanese companies. Executive Yuan Secretary-General Kung Ming-hsin (龔明鑫) on Friday said that Taiwan is optimistic about building a semiconductor cluster in
Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) Chairman Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) on Thursday was handcuffed and escorted by police to the Taipei Detention Center, after the Taipei District Court ordered that he be detained and held incommunicado for suspected corruption during his tenure as Taipei mayor. The ruling reversed an earlier decision by the same court on Monday last week that ordered Ko’s release without bail. That decision was appealed by prosecutors on Wednesday, leading the High Court to conclude that Ko had been “actively involved” in the alleged corruption and it ordered the district court to hold a second detention hearing. Video clips
RSS