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
Why is Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) not a “happy camper” these days regarding Taiwan? Taiwanese have not become more “CCP friendly” in response to the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) use of spies and graft by the United Front Work Department, intimidation conducted by the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) and the Armed Police/Coast Guard, and endless subversive political warfare measures, including cyber-attacks, economic coercion, and diplomatic isolation. The percentage of Taiwanese that prefer the status quo or prefer moving towards independence continues to rise — 76 percent as of December last year. According to National Chengchi University (NCCU) polling, the Taiwanese
It would be absurd to claim to see a silver lining behind every US President Donald Trump cloud. Those clouds are too many, too dark and too dangerous. All the same, viewed from a domestic political perspective, there is a clear emerging UK upside to Trump’s efforts at crashing the post-Cold War order. It might even get a boost from Thursday’s Washington visit by British Prime Minister Keir Starmer. In July last year, when Starmer became prime minister, the Labour Party was rigidly on the defensive about Europe. Brexit was seen as an electorally unstable issue for a party whose priority
US President Donald Trump is systematically dismantling the network of multilateral institutions, organizations and agreements that have helped prevent a third world war for more than 70 years. Yet many governments are twisting themselves into knots trying to downplay his actions, insisting that things are not as they seem and that even if they are, confronting the menace in the White House simply is not an option. Disagreement must be carefully disguised to avoid provoking his wrath. For the British political establishment, the convenient excuse is the need to preserve the UK’s “special relationship” with the US. Following their White House
US President Donald Trump’s return to the White House has brought renewed scrutiny to the Taiwan-US semiconductor relationship with his claim that Taiwan “stole” the US chip business and threats of 100 percent tariffs on foreign-made processors. For Taiwanese and industry leaders, understanding those developments in their full context is crucial while maintaining a clear vision of Taiwan’s role in the global technology ecosystem. The assertion that Taiwan “stole” the US’ semiconductor industry fundamentally misunderstands the evolution of global technology manufacturing. Over the past four decades, Taiwan’s semiconductor industry, led by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC), has grown through legitimate means
RSS