Higher education institutions nationwide are focusing too much on research at the expense of teaching, with students receiving precious little attention from their professors and school administrators, as the Ministry of Education scrambles to throw cash at the problem, education officials said.
A press release yesterday said that since 2005 the ministry has lavished merit-based grants worth approximately NT$100 million (US$3 million) on schools boasting innovative methods to enhance their curricula and help students as part of its "Higher Education Awards Plan for Outstanding Universities."
The ministry had set aside NT$1 billion for the plan in 2005 for 13 universities with creative proposals to improve their teaching, Vice Minister of Education Lu Mu-lin (呂木琳) said yesterday at a press conference touting the plan.
Last year, he said, the cash pool for the plan was increased to NT$5 billion at President Chen Shui-bian's (
As part of the project, 58 tertiary institutions -- including 28 universities and 30 vocational colleges -- won subsidies to realize their proposals to improve teaching.
This year, the ministry is once again considering doling out a total of NT$5 billion to outstanding schools to encourage curriculum enhancement, Lu said.
The legislature was scheduled to begin reviewing the budget for this year's plan today, Lu said.
"As a teacher and researcher at Academia Sinica, I've always believed that teaching and researching should go hand in hand," Minister of Education Tu Cheng-sheng (
"But research has come to dominate teaching on our university and college campuses," Tu said. "Teaching should be the priority at schools for higher education."
By making sure that the project continued, we can ensure that the quality of the nation's academic institutions will continue to rise, Tu said.
By waving juicy grants before schools for higher education, the ministry is fostering a competitive environment from which great ideas spill forth on how to improve the quality of teaching, officials from the ministry's Department of Higher Education said.
Johanne Liou (劉喬安), a Taiwanese woman who shot to unwanted fame during the Sunflower movement protests in 2014, was arrested in Boston last month amid US President Donald Trump’s crackdown on illegal immigrants, the Criminal Investigation Bureau (CIB) said yesterday. The arrest of Liou was first made public on the official Web site of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) on Tuesday. ICE said Liou was apprehended for overstaying her visa. The Boston Field Office’s Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) had arrested Liou, a “fugitive, criminal alien wanted for embezzlement, fraud and drug crimes in Taiwan,” ICE said. Liou was taken into custody
ON PAROLE: The 73-year-old suspect has a criminal record of rape committed when he was serving in the military, as well as robbery and theft, police said The Kaohsiung District Court yesterday approved the detention of a 73-year-old man for allegedly murdering three women. The suspect, surnamed Chang (張), was arrested on Wednesday evening in connection with the death of a 71-year-old woman surnamed Chao (趙). The Kaohsiung City Police Department yesterday also unveiled the identities of two other possible victims in the serial killing case, a 75-year-old woman surnamed Huang (黃), the suspect’s sister-in-law, and a 75-year-old woman surnamed Chang (張), who is not related to the suspect. The case came to light when Chao disappeared after taking the suspect back to his residence on Sunday. Police, upon reviewing CCTV
TAIWAN ADVOCATES: The resolution, which called for the recognition of Taiwan as a country and normalized relations, was supported by 22 Republican representatives Two US representatives on Thursday reintroduced a resolution calling for the US to end its “one China” policy, resume formal diplomatic ties with Taiwan and negotiate a bilateral Taiwan-US free trade agreement. Republican US representatives Tom Tiffany of Wisconsin’s 7th Congressional District and Scott Perry of Pennsylvania’s 10th District were backed by 22 Republican members of the US House of Representatives. The two congressmen first introduced the resolution together in 2021. The resolution called on US President Donald Trump to “abandon the antiquated ‘one China’ policy in favor of a policy that recognizes the objective reality that Taiwan is an independent country, not
The US-Japan joint statement released on Friday not mentioning the “one China” policy might be a sign that US President Donald Trump intends to decouple US-China relations from Taiwan, a Taiwanese academic said. Following Trump’s meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba on Friday, the US and Japan issued a joint statement where they reaffirmed the importance of peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait and support for Taiwan’s meaningful participation in international organizations. Trump has not personally brought up the “one China” policy in more than a year, National Taiwan University Department of Political Science Associate Professor Chen Shih-min (陳世民)