University autonomy is a buzzword that has been used again and again in the controversy over the election of former minister without portfolio Kuan Chung-ming (管中閔) as president of National Taiwan University (NTU) and the Ministry of Education’s refusal to approve his appointment.
The legal basis for university autonomy in Taiwan is Article 1 of the University Act (大學法), the second paragraph of which reads: “Universities shall be guaranteed academic freedom and shall enjoy autonomy within the range of laws and regulations.”
However, due to the limitations of the background against which the act was drawn up 11 years ago, university autonomy has not been thoroughly implemented on Taiwan’s campuses. On the contrary, high-ranking figures who occupy powerful positions on campus have used the act to consolidate their power and influence.
Addressing the dispute, Premier William Lai (賴清德) said: “According to the law, the Ministry of Education has the power of oversight, and it should have the moral courage, and does have a legal responsibility, to make its opinion known.”
However, in the course of the NTU president selection process, the ministry’s Department of Higher Education did not rigorously do its duty by exercising oversight and putting the act into practice, and this failure has led to social discord.
If the nation’s top university can get into such an awful mess, what about private universities? Having been a representative on the university affairs council at Kaohsiung Medical University (KMU) for many years, I am only too familiar with this painful reality.
We need to recognize that there is a big difference between a school’s board of trustees and a company’s board of directors, because a school is a not-for-profit institution and its board of trustees has no rights of ownership over the school.
A university is a kind of public good, not the private property of any family. This is precisely why the ministry has given universities subsidies for books, equipment and physical and intangible facilities, regardless of whether they are public or private.
If we are going to put the theory of university autonomy into practice in private universities, which are public goods, democratic and transparent procedures for selecting university presidents must be one precondition for doing so.
KMU, where I have been working for 20 years, can serve as an example.
The school was founded as Kaohsiung Medical College by Tu Tsung-ming (杜聰明), the first Taiwanese to ever be awarded a doctorate of medical sciences.
However, through political manipulation, businessman and former Kaohsiung mayor Chen Chi-chuan (陳啟川), who died in 1993, and his relatives and friends have perpetually occupied seats on the board of trustees.
The Chen family has throughout the years regarded KMU as its private property.
Aside from altering the facts about who founded the university, they have interfered in the school’s administrative and personnel affairs, its teaching hospital procurement, building and engineering projects, purchasing of equipment and so on, all of which seriously contravene Article 50 of the Private School Act (私立學校法).
Although the school has been repeatedly penalized by the ministry and the Control Yuan has proposed corrective measures, its board of trustees has gone on in the same manner.
If there is no impartial gatekeeper to supervise and regulate a school’s public goods, the board of trustees will be free to stick its hands into a school’s profitable pockets.
This gatekeeper is a president who is chosen through a democratic electoral process in which the candidates express their school governance philosophies for the consideration of every teacher and student in the school.
Students should participate in the electoral process. Thus, one candidate will eventually win the support of the majority of faculty, staff and students.
Such a process is far preferable to one in which the board of trustees operates behind closed doors, while the ministry allows it to do so in the name of university autonomy, overlooking the fact that no such autonomy can exist without the precondition of democracy.
One of the biggest loopholes in the Private School Act is that there are no term limits for board trustees, so people can be trustees forever, whereas school presidents serve three-year terms and can only serve two terms in a row.
Perpetual boards of trustees have lots of room for manipulation. If university presidents who have big ideas propose reforms that go against the interests of the board of trustees, as soon as they resign, all their efforts will go down the drain and come to naught. That is the existing state of affairs at KMU.
If the toxic Private School Act is not amended, if the Department of Higher Education goes on failing to shoulder its duty of supervision, and if trustees who represent corporate interests can be board members in perpetuity while seeking to make profits for themselves, Taiwan’s university education will disintegrate and university autonomy will forever remain beyond reach.
Let us hope that, as well as worrying about the NTU president selection controversy, Lai can also think about the issue of autonomy of private universities and colleges.
After all, 74 percent of university students and 70 percent of university teachers in Taiwan study or teach in private institutions.
If the moral deterioration of private institutions reaches a certain point, it will not just cause higher education as a whole to crumble, but also cause society to sink into the mire.
Cheng Ling-fang is a professor at Kaohsiung Medical University’s Graduate Institute of Gender Studies.
Translated by Julian Clegg
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