Neither Kaohsiung Medical University (KMU) nor National Sun Yat-sen University (NSYSU) may unilaterally decide on a merger of the two after KMU students on Wednesday voted in favor of the plan, the KMU administration said in a statement on Thursday.
In last month’s Evaluation Bimonthly — published by the Higher Education Evaluation and Accreditation Council of Taiwan — NSYSU president Cheng Ying-yao (鄭英耀) proposed a merger between KMU, a private university, and NSYSU, a public institution.
The KMU Alumni Association on March 2 posted a statement on Facebook expressing its strong support for the proposal.
Photo: Lin Yao-wen, Taipei Times
At a KMU Student Association meeting on Wednesday, 695 students voted on the merger. The tally showed 47.2 percent approved of the move, 40 percent had no opinion and 12.8 percent were against it.
In its statement, the KMU administration praised the students for demonstrating a high level of maturity by expressing their opinion through a vote.
However, mergers between public and private universities must comply with government regulations and cannot be invoked by only one of the parties, it said.
Since 2012, the two universities have closely collaborated through a program into which they have invested NT$146 million (US$4.74 million) in research grants. Researchers from the universities have collaborated to publish 1,633 papers. Each semester, the universities decide on a quota for student transfers between them.
The advantages of a merger outweigh the disadvantages, former KMU Alumni Association president Lan Chuan-sheng (藍傳盛) said.
Once merged, the institutes would attract more funding, equipment and resources, Lan said.
There is only a 5 percent overlap between the majors offered by the universities, he said, adding that the two would perfectly complement each other.
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