The Ministry of Education is debating whether to relax the cap on the number of international students local universities are allowed to recruit to help schools increase their student pool amid a declining birth rate, Vice Minister of Education Lin Tsung-ming (林聰明) said yesterday.
Lin told the ministry’s annual meeting of university presidents in Kaohsiung that the ministry had been discussing how to relax the Act Governing International Students’ Study in Taiwan (外國學生來台就學辦法), allowing universities that are unable to recruit enough local students to fill the vacancies with foreign students.
Under current regulations, universities are only allowed to create an additional student quota — about 10 percent of a school’s vacancies each year — for international students.
Lin said the proposal could take effect in the coming academic year.
Taiwanese universities will have to improve the bilingual environment on campus and develop an overseas “market,” he said.
The nation’s birth rate last year dropped to 0.008 percent while population growth is expected to turn negative by 2017, ministry statistics showed.
Lin told the meeting that the ministry would urge the legislature to pass a number of bills in the spring legislative session that would allow Taiwanese universities to enroll students from China.
“Otherwise, Chinese students will not be able to study in Taiwan in the foreseeable future,” he said.
Meanwhile, Minister of Education Wu Ching-chi (吳清基) told the meeting that the ministry would add flexibility into professors’ pay scales in the summer to keep distinguished academics in Taiwan.
The ministry is also considering allowing people over the age of 25 who have worked for more than five years and may not necessarily have a high school diploma to attend university, Wu said.
Under the college entrance regulations, applicants must have high school diplomas or documents proving they have high-school-equivalent proficiency.
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