The Executive Yuan’s plan to help 1,000 doctoral degree holders establish 100 research-based firms might cause more harm than good, the Taiwan Higher Education Union said.
The rate of success for entrepreneurship is relatively low, union president Liu Mei-chun (劉梅君) said, adding that the project is too grand and the government should offer a clearer vision.
“Is the government simply offering funding, or are they going to establish a task force to help support and foster entrepreneurial efforts?” Liu said, adding that the public should not have to shoulder the fallout with their tax dollars if it fails.
Level of education does not directly correlate with the ability to establish a business, Liu said, adding that people are usually well into their 30s by the time they complete their doctorates and do not need additional demoralization by failing with a start-up.
Lowering the professor-to-student ratio in colleges and universities would open more than 10,000 positions and solve the problem of having too many highly educated people, in addition to improving the quality of research and teaching, Liu said.
“Founding a business is not as simple as just giving someone money,” Chienkuo Technology University dean Chen Fan-hsing (陳繁興) said.
Even people with doctorates in the sciences would need to know core technologies and how to run a company, Chen said, adding that the government should instead focus on working with enterprises to hire people with knowledge of specific technologies to work in research and development.
This would help provide a stable income and allow people to focus on their professional expertise, Chen added.
Wang Li-sheng (王立昇), a professor at National Taiwan University’s Institute of Applied Mechanics, said that people with doctorates are more proficient in academic research and encouraging them to start businesses would deprive them of their advantage.
“If we place the success rate at 10 percent, more than 900 doctors would fail at establishing a business,” Wang said.
Encouraging people to waste their best years on flighty government policies would lead to even greater social issues, Wang said, adding that the government does not have a fail-safe option in place.
The government should instead work with industries to encourage them to hire highly educated people for research and development positions, Wang said.
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