Former minister of education Chiang Wei-ling (蔣偉寧) was forced to resign amid misdeeds by a Taiwanese academic that were widely reported in the international media. Both the scope of the misconduct and the time span covered — almost a decade — are astonishing. Even more surprising is that the scheme was not unearthed sooner.
Taiwan’s academic circles have played an unspoken game that falls far below the honesty bar for years. To survive in this environment, one must possess a doctorate. With a higher degree in pocket, one then hunts for promotion by piling up a stack of published papers without consideration of content. It is the quantity that counts, not the quality. In one sense, fraud and academic juggling are deemed justifiable acts of survival.
These shameful deeds have their roots in Taiwan’s skewed societal value system — the idolization and glorification of higher degrees.
In the 1990s, the National Space Program Office hired dozens of people with doctorates. Twenty years later, it has no significant accomplishments to show for it.
The Industrial Technology Research Institute boasted that, as of May, it had a staff of 5,772 — of whom 1,371 hold doctorates, 3,135 have master’s degrees and 1,266 have bachelor’s degrees. However, despite its more than three decades in existence, the institute has only generated 20,477 patents and fewer than 300 spin-offs.
National Taiwan University had, as of December last year, a student body of 32,674 (16,925 undergraduates, 15,749 graduate students) and teaching staff of 1,993. About 10,000 of the graduate students were studying for master’s degrees, while the rest were working on doctorates. These numbers are impressive. Yet, the impact the numerical advantage is supposed to provide did not materialize in the most recent decade.
Such a warped proposition has spread not only in teaching campuses and industrial research circles, but also in government organizations, to the point that almost all Cabinet heads hold doctorates.
Society holds a blind belief that a large group of people with doctorates can produce miracles. The reality is that a person holding a higher degree may be an expert in a narrow, highly specialized field of study, but is certainly not an omnipotent prophet.
Taiwan is losing ground against South Korea. To a large extent, this can be traced to the misguided dogma-worshiping academic posturing that produces merely black letters on paper. The current economic and income stagnation can no longer tolerate such practices.
Kengchi Goah is a senior research fellow at the Taiwan Public Policy Council in the US.
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