A university in Taoyuan earlier this month reported that 12 of its female foreign students had gone missing. They were later found by police in a “call-girl station” in Taipei. The news once again sheds light on the condition of foreign students in Taiwan.
The latest incident is only the tip of the iceberg. More issues should be addressed in university admission procedures. As early as in 2017, it was revealed that Sri Lankan students at University of Kang Ning were duped into working at food factories to pay for tuition.
In 2019, attracted by a New Southbound Policy scholarship program, more than 1,000 students came to study in Taiwan. Upon their arrival, 300 of them were taken by trucks to work in factories under the pretext of participating in internships.
To protect its citizens from forced labor, Indonesia halted educational exchanges with Taiwan. Eight universities were ordered to stop recruiting Indonesian students.
Jakarta’s concern was not groundless. It was discovered that in at least six Taiwanese universities, Indonesian students had to work, not of their free will, in a so-called “intern class.”
Since 2017, with the launch of the New Southbound Policy, the Executive Yuan has promoted collaboration between Taiwan and ASEAN members and other Southeast Asian countries. The exchanges have come in the form of talent training, industrial development, educational investment, cultural communication, tourism and agriculture. The purpose is to establish a new partnership with Southeast Asian countries.
Later, the Ministry of Education created the New Southbound Industry-Academia Collaboration Program, providing universities with a subsidy ranging from NT$1 million to NT$4 million (US$32,583 to US$130,331). Private universities went after the policy in a swarm. As a result, 297 classes were arranged under the program, with universities admitting 11,230 foreign students.
Earlier this year, Collines Mugisha, a Ugandan student who came to Taiwan to study engineering, told the online Taipei-based news site The Reporter that Chung Chou University of Science and Technology in Changhua County failed to offer classes in English for foreign students, and he never received the scholarship the university had promised him.
The Reporter found that 16 Ugandan students were forced to work as factory interns for long hours and low pay. Before long, Philippine students at Kao Yuan University in Kaohsiung also accused the school of using them as cheap labor. They said they were forced to work in factories 40 hours per week, and the work was irrelevant to their studies.
These cases point at some more serious problems with Taiwan’s private universities. The admissions procedures to recruit foreign students and the abuse of their labor are only one of the issues.
Mistreatment and exploitation of foreign students undermine the exchanges between Taiwan and Southeast Asian countries.
International human rights organizations have been monitoring the New Southbound Policy. The US Department of State’s annual Trafficking in Persons Report for last year and this year showed that traffickers in Taiwan have taken advantage of the policy’s relaxed visa requirements, attracting Southeast Asian students and tourists to Taiwan, and subjecting them to forced labor and prostitution.
The admissions procedures for higher education must be critically reviewed and amended, otherwise Taiwan’s universities would become another “KK Park,” notorious for human trafficking.
Tai Po-fen is a professor of sociology at Fu Jen Catholic University.
Translated by Liu Yi-hung
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