Last week, the Ministry of Education was found to be planning to allow three universities — which were permitted to admit government-funded postgraduate medical students under special provisions from 2022 to this year — to continue admitting self-funded medical students next year beyond the enrollment cap, which has not been changed in two decades.
The three universities are: National Tsing Hua University, National Chung Hsing University and National Sun Yat-sen University.
Eleven medical groups issued a statement to oppose the plan. The ministry responded by saying it did not intend to increase the admission quota, with the Executive Yuan saying that it has decided to maintain the total medical student enrollment quota at 1,300 per year.
The incident revealed that the Ministry of Health and Welfare has decided to halt its plan to provide a government-sponsored quota for medical students in some specialties after this academic year.
The purpose of the program was to address the uneven distribution of doctors across the country and different specialties.
The program should not be halted, so that medical needs in remote areas could be fulfilled, while the shortage of doctors in some specialties, including general medicine, surgery, obstetrics and gynecology, pediatrics, emergency medicine, and intensive care could be addressed. Why end the program after this academic year?
Most medical school graduates in Taiwan are not willing to dedicate themselves in those specialties. Many would rather pursue a career in specialties, such as cosmetic surgery, that are less stressful or do not require shift work. This is a clear result of the medical education system in our country failing to produce graduates willing to serve in those demanding specialties.
Now that the program designed to address shortages in those areas is to be ceased, it would mean that the nation’s medical schools could not enroll students who are willing to selflessly serve the public, while also being unable to produce graduates who are committed to rescuing lives.
What is the purpose of establishing medical schools? Do medical school professors and experts of the Taiwan Medical Accreditation Council live up to what they are expected of?
Lin Min-che is a surgeon.
Translated by Fion Khan
What began on Feb. 28 as a military campaign against Iran quickly became the largest energy-supply disruption in modern times. Unlike the oil crises of the 1970s, which stemmed from producer-led embargoes, US President Donald Trump is the first leader in modern history to trigger a cascading global energy crisis through direct military action. In the process, Trump has also laid bare Taiwan’s strategic and economic fragilities, offering Beijing a real-time tutorial in how to exploit them. Repairing the damage to Persian Gulf oil and gas infrastructure could take years, suggesting that elevated energy prices are likely to persist. But the most
Taiwan should reject two flawed answers to the Eswatini controversy: that diplomatic allies no longer matter, or that they must be preserved at any cost. The sustainable answer is to maintain formal diplomatic relations while redesigning development relationships around transparency, local ownership and democratic accountability. President William Lai’s (賴清德) canceled trip to Eswatini has elicited two predictable reactions in Taiwan. One camp has argued that the episode proves Taiwan must double down on support for every remaining diplomatic ally, because Beijing is tightening the screws, and formal recognition is too scarce to risk. The other says the opposite: If maintaining
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文), during an interview for the podcast Lanshuan Time (蘭萱時間) released on Monday, said that a US professor had said that she deserved to be nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize following her meeting earlier this month with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平). Cheng’s “journey of peace” has garnered attention from overseas and from within Taiwan. The latest My Formosa poll, conducted last week after the Cheng-Xi meeting, shows that Cheng’s approval rating is 31.5 percent, up 7.6 percentage points compared with the month before. The same poll showed that 44.5 percent of respondents
India’s semiconductor strategy is undergoing a quiet, but significant, recalibration. With the rollout of India Semiconductor Mission (ISM) 2.0, New Delhi is signaling a shift away from ambition-driven leaps toward a more grounded, capability-led approach rooted in industrial realities and institutional learning. Rather than attempting to enter the most advanced nodes immediately, India has chosen to prioritize mature technologies in the 28-nanometer to 65-nanometer range. That would not be a retreat, but a strategic alignment with domestic capabilities, market demand and global supply chain gaps. The shift carries the imprimatur of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, indicating that the recalibration is
RSS