The Professor Huang Kun-huei Education Foundation was founded yesterday, with missions to research education problems and provide support to financially disadvantaged students and outstanding educators and students.
Pau Jar Group founder Lin Chen-hai (林陳海) was the first to propose the creation of the foundation and was the primary source of funding for its establishment, said Huang Kun-huei (黃昆輝), who served as minister of education in the early 1980s and as minister without portfolio and Mainland Affairs Council chair under former president Lee Teng-hui (李登輝).
Parents and students often worry about efforts to reform education, and Lin expressed his belief that a platform was needed to allow academics, experts, parents and members of the public to identify ways to meet the challenges facing the educational system and propose them to authorities, Huang said.
Photo: Liu Hsin-de, Taipei Times
“People should retire when it is their time to retire, but if, like Lin said, I am still able to contribute in some way, I will take it upon myself to do so until my last breath,” Huang said at the foundation’s launch in Taipei.
Research is the foundation’s primary function, as it has been positioned to become a private-sector think tank, while its secondary functions are to help financially disadvantaged students finish their educations and reward outstanding teachers who help students who have gone astray and those from low-income families, as well as students who show excellent academic performance and character, he said.
The foundation is to conduct surveys of high-profile education issues, publishing the results as reference for authorities, and hold international seminars to boost academic exchanges, Huang said.
Education is the most fundamental element that drives national development, Huang said, vowing to work with people from all walks of life to tackle education problems.
Touting the foundation as a “wise investment” by Huang and Lin, Minister of Education Pan Wen-chung (潘文忠) said at the opening ceremony that the Ministry of Education would value suggestions from the foundation.
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Wang Jin-pyng (王金平) said that, despite their political differences, Huang, a former Taiwan Solidarity Union chairman, often consulted him when bills or budget proposals risked becoming stymied in the legislature.
“I am in awe of him. He is a man who truly prioritizes his nation and people,” Wang said.
The foundation yesterday held its first education forum, which was divided into four parts: higher education, vocational education, the 12-year national educational system and kindergarten education.
Kevin Zang (臧聲遠), editor-in-chief of the Chinese-language monthly magazine Career, called for the nation’s vocational education system to be upgraded to provide tourism and culinary students opportunities to achieve more than serving as wait staff.
The ministry has in recent years taken action to curb “soaring” numbers of students enrolled in tourism and culinary programs, Zang said, citing data published last year by the ministry.
“About 10 million foreigners visited Taiwan last year, but the revenue generated was only marginally more than Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co’s annual revenue,” he said.
While the number of students enrolling in engineering and mechanics programs has been declining, more universities have launched tourism, culinary and design departments, Zang said.
“We need to ask ourselves: ‘Do tourism and the catering sector contribute 10 percent of the nation’s GDP?’ because they constitute 10 percent of the nation’s students,” he said. “Similarly, between one-ninth and one-10th of students graduate from design departments each year, but the design industry contributes only one-300th of the nation’s GDP.”
Vocational schools have been slow to adjust their departments to bring them in line with the goals of policies to boost the nation’s business development, ignoring the job market’s supply and demand, highlighting their single-minded interest in opening departments that help boost enrollment, Zang said.
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