National Taipei University of Technology (NTUT) has listed an opening for an assistant professor in its five-year junior college program for intelligent automation engineering. According to the job posting, the successful applicant would teach 16 hours per week, provide after-school tutoring, remedial teaching, laboratory management, and support for departmental affairs and student recruiting events. They would start with an entry-level salary for assistant professors, without consideration for seniority from their previous employment.
The posting reveals two serious long-standing problems in the education system: One is that thousands of project teachers have become the sweatshop workers of the education system, and the other is that reforming the system lacks proper review and oversight.
When any reform happens to have been a success, everyone competes to take credit; when it fails, nobody takes responsibility.
In accordance with the Ministry of Education’s flexible payment program, intended to retain “outstanding talent” at institutions, academic staff are often hired as “project teachers,” given responsibilities and salaries similar to the NTUT posting. Considering the conditions in that example, it is questionable, if possible, whether “outstanding talent” would be found. Schools instead hire a batch of sweatshop workers at the bare minimum wage they can get away with.
The ministry in mid-2017 announced that as the overall national talent development policy encourages science and technology schools to establish five-year junior college programs focused on fields with labor shortages, such as agriculture, forestry, fishery and animal husbandry, as well as the industrial sector, NTUT, National Formosa University and National Kaohsiung First University of Science and Technology would also establish similar programs the following year.
More than two years later, more public and private universities and colleges have rushed to set up five-year junior college programs. The jury is still out on the success of the reform, but then-deputy minister of education Yao Leeh-der (姚立德) has already been promoted to the Examination Yuan, and his alma mater is recruiting teachers to work in its sweatshop.
Education reform in Taiwan has always been implemented from the top down, either by experts and academics forming committees to discuss changes or through directives from department officials.
The ministry has implemented rules for schools to follow. For example, the first round of education reform was followed by a great increase in universities, as colleges and technical schools were upgraded. Then there was the establishment of comprehensive high schools and the addition of five-year junior colleges.
Normally bottom-up reform involves submitting proposals and applying for funds, and a review and approval mechanism is also necessary.
However, top-down policies need none of that — the top officials being so wise, who would dare raise any questions or make any demands?
Of the four cases mentioned here, the first three suffered from a lack of timely review and improvements, and in the end they became targets of much criticism.
No review and approval mechanism has been created for the addition of five-year junior colleges, as is the case with the “learning portfolio” policy, which has also drawn criticism.
The ministry must understand that the only way to avoid criticism of top-down reform policies is to set up a mechanism for regular post-implementation review and adjustments, and to announce those changes.
Huang Rongwen is a professor at National Changhua University of Education.
Translated by Lin Lee-kai and Perry Svensson
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