Taiwan will continue to create an attractive working environment for international talent amid increasingly fierce global competition for skilled workers, President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) said yesterday.
At the opening ceremony marking the first day of Academia Sinica’s 30th biannual academician’s meeting, Ma said the battle for talent is an issue of national security and that in this “era of uncertainty,” integrating various research fields has taken on particular importance.
“Academia Sinica was never an ivory tower; it conducts fundamental research and gives very practical suggestions that are beneficial to the livelihoods of the people,” he said.
Photo: CNA
Ma pledged that the government will help create attractive conditions to lure global talent to Taiwan as he said the Declaration on Talent Recruitment issued by Academia Sinica President Wong Chi-huey (翁啟惠) last year had alerted the government to the academic brain drain crisis.
The declaration was written by Wong and several key leaders in Taiwan’s academic, business, arts and media sectors in August last year, calling for attention to the problem of imbalanced supply and demand of talents in academic professions.
Lin Yu-sheng (林毓生), an academician and professor emeritus of history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said the current university assessment mechanism in Taiwan is disorderly and going in the wrong direction, leading to universities expending an excessive amount of effort and resources in striving to meet the assessment’s requirements.
He suggested that the frequency of university department assessments should be decreased from once every five years to once every 10 years, reducing the amount of evaluations made and thus affording more space for an institution’s academic freedom.
Minister of Education Chiang Wei-ling (蔣偉寧), responded by saying that assessments are still important for the development of schools and that their frequency could be discussed further. However, the ministry is leaning toward merging some of the external assessments to allow more institutional self-assessment, but maintaining the frequency to once in every five years.
Chiang said the ministry is currently working on reducing performance indicators to allow universities to establish better self-assessment mechanisms for themselves.
More than 200 academicians are attending the four-day meeting, during which new inductees will be elected to join the prestigious organization on the summit’s final day on Thursday.
Additional reporting by CNA
Taiwan is to have nine extended holidays next year, led by a nine-day Lunar New Year break, the Cabinet announced yesterday. The nine-day Lunar New Year holiday next year matches the length of this year’s holiday, which featured six extended holidays. The increase in extended holidays is due to the Act on the Implementation of Commemorative and Festival Holidays (紀念日及節日實施條例), which was passed early last month with support from the opposition Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Taiwan People’s Party. Under the new act, the day before Lunar New Year’s Eve is also a national holiday, and Labor Day would no longer be limited
COMMITMENTS: The company had a relatively low renewable ratio at 56 percent and did not have any goal to achieve 100 percent renewable energy, the report said Pegatron Corp ranked the lowest among five major final assembly suppliers in progressing toward Apple Inc’s commitment to be 100 percent carbon neutral by 2030, a Greenpeace East Asia report said yesterday. While Apple has set the goal of using 100 percent renewable energy across its entire business, supply chain and product lifecycle by 2030, carbon emissions from electronics manufacturing are rising globally due to increased energy consumption, it said. Given that carbon emissions from its supply chain accounted for more than half of its total emissions last year, Greenpeace East Asia evaluated the green transition performance of Apple’s five largest final
Taiwan is to extend its visa-waiver program for Philippine passport holders for another year, starting on Aug. 1, Minister of Foreign Affairs Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍) said on Friday. Lin made the announcement during a reception in Taipei marking the 127th anniversary of Philippine independence and the 50th anniversary of the establishment of the Manila Economic and Cultural Office (MECO) in Taiwan, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said. The decision reflected Taiwan’s commitment to deepening exchanges with the Philippines, the statement cited Lin as saying, adding that it was a key partner under the New Southbound Policy launched in 2016. Lin also expressed hope
Temperatures in New Taipei City’s Sindian District (新店) climbed past 37°C yesterday, as the Central Weather Administration (CWA) issued heat alerts for 16 municipalities, warning the public of intense heat expected across Taiwan. The hottest location in Taiwan was in Sindian, where the mercury reached 37.5°C at about 2pm, according to CWA data. Taipei’s Shilin District (士林) recorded a temperature of 37.4°C at noon, Taitung County’s Jinfeng Township (金峰) at 12:50 pm logged a temperature of 37.4°C and Miaoli County’s Toufen Township (頭份) reached 36.7°C at 11:40am, the CWA said. The weather agency yesterday issued a yellow level information notice for Taipei, New
RSS