National Chengchi University (NCCU) yesterday announced that it is trying to negotiate a merger with National Taiwan University of Science and Technology (NTUST).
NCCU said in a statement that it would “reshape higher education culture with ‘a college town of humanities, science and innovation.’”
NTUST president Liao Ching-jong (廖慶榮) said that the two universities had conducted discussions and that the potential pairing would complement each other, because NCCU is a top institute in the field of humanities and NTUST is known for its research in advanced technology.
However, there are other universities interested in merging with NTUST, such as National Taiwan Normal University, which proposed a merger 12 years ago, and NTUST is evaluating all possibilities, Liao said.
University mergers enhance the scale and potential of research and development, boost international rankings and improve the chance of securing funding from the Ministry of Education, Liao said.
NCCU student association director Chen Wan-lin (陳萬霖) said the proposed merger took students by surprise, speculating it has largely to do with university rankings, “but what concerns students is study.”
Course selection would be unfavorable to NCCU students if the merger was approved, because courses offered by NTUST are generally more exclusive and technical, he said.
“I have reservations about the merger’s benefit to students. If pluralism is a point of consideration, the NCCU is not in lack of science education. Students’ opinions must be included in negotiations,” he said.
A long-discussed merger between National Yang Ming University and National Chiao Tung University has stumbled, despite their stable partnership, and a merger proposal between NCCU and NTUST would have been less surprising had the two institutes “got acquainted in advance,” NCCU law professor Liu Hung-en (劉宏恩) said.
Department of Higher Education Director Nicole Lee (李彥儀) said the proposed merger was unexpected, adding that the ministry had not received any proposal.
Every public university merger must undergo a long process of communication within and between universities before a proposal is submitted to and reviewed by the ministry and the Executive Yuan, Lee said.
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