Media reports have said that since 2016, China’s Cross-Strait Tsinghua Research Institute (清華海峽研究院) had subleased an office on the fifth floor of National Tsing Hua University’s Innovative Incubation Center (創新育成中心) through the school’s Tze-Chiang Foundation of Science and Technology (自強工業科學基金會).
Access to a top Taiwanese university gave Beijing the opportunity to steal technology and lure top talent, in addition to promoting its “united front” campaign.
The Ministry of Economic Affairs passed regulations in 1996 to encourage public and private organizations to set up “innovative incubation centers” for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).
Promoting the policy, the ministry advised and guided the public and private sectors to capitalize on their software and hardware resources by helping innovative SMEs and start-ups, thus accelerating an upgrade of Taiwan’s industrial sector. At the time, every college and university strove to set up its own innovative incubation center.
Today, most Taiwanese universities have their own innovative incubation centers. Although the centers were mostly built with public funds, each center has created regulations to govern its operations. Financially, each center is responsible for its own profits and losses. As the centers do not need the Ministry of Education’s approval when making the regulations, they operate beyond the reach of the government.
Universities differ in how they operate their centers. The pressure of attracting investors makes being the head of a center a difficult job, especially when the unit is new. At first, a department director or a top school administrator often serves concurrently as head of the center, while professional managers and employees are hired from outside the school’s personnel.
In the mid-1990s, Taiwan was pushing for its first educational reform. To satisfy students’ thirst for a higher degree, a number of universities were established, upgraded or transformed. The government also opened the door to “recurrent education,” as many universities strove to establish various “in-service programs” to complement the innovative incubation centers.
Doing so made it easier for the universities to attract students for their education programs and businesses for the innovative incubation centers, while profits poured in.
Owners of SMEs who spent money to join the centers would also enter the degree programs — when their three-year contracts with the centers ended, they received a diploma, too. Why not?
Although this does not give the whole picture, there are plenty of similar examples.
However, as time passed, more unqualified students gained their master’s degrees through the “in-service programs.”
As supply now exceeds demand due to the large number of universities in Taiwan, “recurrent education” is no longer popular, and many innovative incubation centers are having difficulty attracting investors and maintaining operations. Some have even dismissed their professional managers and placed the center directors in charge of everything.
Under similar circumstances, NTHU rented out office space to make ends meet.
Universities should promptly review their innovative incubation centers. If the centers perform poorly, perhaps they should be abolished. The universities could then make use of the space based on what teachers’ and students’ greatest interests are.
Huang Rongwen is a professor at the National Changhua University of Education.
Translated by Eddy Chang
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