The Control Yuan yesterday urged the Ministry of Education to look into why four universities receiving special project funding failed to offer 20 percent of all courses in each grade taught entirely in English.
According to his investigation, Control Yuan member Peter Chang (張武修) said that National Taiwan University only offers 5 percent of courses in each grade in English, while National Cheng Kung University averaged 10 percent, National Chiao Tung University averaged 10 to 13 percent, and National Tsing Hua University, while better than the others, still averaged under 20 percent.
In addition, the findings of a Times Higher Education report that looked into 70,000 bachelor and master-level programs in 700 cities taught in English differed from the figures reported by universities to the ministry, Chang added.
Photo: Chung Li-hua, Taipei Times
Of the four universities participating in the ministry’s program, the report found that National Taiwan University offered 20 English-taught programs, National Cheng Kung University offered two and National Tsing Hua University only offered one, while figures for National Chiao Tung University were not provided, Chang said.
The findings show that the four universities are lagging behind their international peers in terms of competitiveness, he added.
The universities are allocating less than 1 percent of their total expenditures on offering courses taught in English, Chang said.
Course material and planning varies greatly from year to year, showing that the universities have not enacted a long-term plan to use ministry funding to provide students with an all-English education environment, he said.
Across the four universities, the number of English-taught courses have either remained unchanged or declined, and none have established a metric to determine course quality, Chang said.
None of the courses have screening procedures to determine students’ ability to comprehend course materials, nor are there systems in place to help students learn, he added.
The key to establishing an English-taught curriculum is systematic training for teachers in English and education, which is not provided by the schools or the ministry, he said.
Chang suggested that the ministry and universities collaborate to develop a training program for teachers and to provide sufficient incentive to strengthen teachers’ ability and will to teach courses in English.
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