Last week saw a flurry of reports about a Sri Lankan student at the University of Kang Ning who was allegedly working illegally. The Ministry of Education is getting most of the blame and has come under fire from legislators.
Employment agencies, which were not involved in the case and have gained nothing from it, are also being blamed. The ministry has even written to schools and universities telling them not to deal with employment agencies when recruiting students from other countries, although their only connection to the issue was the word “agency.”
Taiwan’s sinking birthrate has led to a situation where education providers cannot recruit anywhere near enough students, so the ministry has started allowing institutions from senior-high school and above to recruit foreign students in the name of academic-industry cooperation. The government hopes to eventually find high-quality immigrants from among these students, who could become a source of entry-level employees.
This policy was introduced with good intentions. If properly implemented, it could help alleviate Taiwan’s serious labor shortage.
However, ministry officials only know how to formulate policies in the comfort of their air-conditioned offices. They know nothing about the customs and conditions prevailing in South and Southeast Asian nations, and they never seek the advice of experts on those countries.
Ministry officials only concern themselves with drawing up legal clauses about recruiting foreign students, without worrying about how to manage them once they are here. As a result, many institutes have struggled with cases like the one at Kang Ning.
For example, consider the basic question of a student’s age. The ministry stipulates that they must be between 14 and 39 years old. This rule is clearly unrealistic.
In Southeast Asian countries, the vast majority of those older than 30 are married with children and need to support their families. How would they have time to study?
Clearly, if people in that age group come to Taiwan, they do so to find work. Monthly salaries in Taiwan are at least seven times as high as in their home countries. To spend a relatively small amount of money to come to Taiwan, supposedly as students, but in reality to work, is both cheaper and more convenient than coming here as a migrant worker, not to mention that after graduating, they can find jobs in Taiwan and attain permanent residency.
Almost every education provider wants to recruit foreign students to make up for the shortfall of Taiwanese students, and universities might even get subsidies from the ministry for doing so.
However, while some have cooperated with foreign institutions before, they are in the minority.
Most institutions have no channels of communication with other countries, no experience dealing with foreign students and no staff who are competent in translation. Their lack of experience makes it easy for them to be taken in by one-sided claims by unlicensed brokers. Then, when foreign students arrive and realize that they have been duped into thinking that they could work as well as study, and that they have to pay higher tuition than they expected, they protest.
The Kang Ning case is just the tip of the iceberg. The ministry needs to handle this issue with caution, otherwise such incidents could become widespread and tarnish Taiwan’s reputation.
Steve Kuan is a former chairman of the Taipei and the New Taipei City Employment Service Institute associations.
Translated by Julian Clegg
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