Officials at National Taiwan University of Science and Technology (NTUST), National Pingtung University of Science and Technology (NPUST) and National Yunlin University of Science and Technology yesterday said that they would promote a merger of the three.
If successful, it would be the largest higher-education merger in Taiwan’s history.
The new institute would have more than 1,200 lecturers and 32,000 students, the universities said.
Photo: Lo Hsin-chen, Taipei Times
While they have yet set a timetable for the merger, they said that they hope to have plans approved at university council meetings by the end of this year.
The plan has been reported to the Ministry of Education, they said.
The goal is to have the new institute recognized as a top Asian university in three to five years after the merger, they said.
NTUST president Liao Ching-jong (廖慶榮) said that he and NPUST president Tai Chang-hsien (戴昌賢) began discussing a merger between three about a month ago.
They agreed that having a third technological university from central Taiwan would make the new university more globally competitive, Liao said.
As the goal is to increase scale, none of the three universities would be downsized, Tai said.
Given that the process would involve many legal issues, they have asked lawmakers to help promote amendments to regulations covering public universities, Tai said.
If the merger succeeds, it would become a new model for mergers, he said.
National Yunlin University of Science and Technology president Yang Neng-shu (楊能舒) said that he would be happy to see the plan succeed, adding that he would establish a panel to handle tasks related to the plan.
While the three have not decided on a name for the new institute, they said they have agreed that “National Taiwan University of Science and Technology” would likely be kept.
The three might be renamed NTUST’s Taipei campus, Yunlin campus and Pingtung campus, they said, adding that the final name must be agreed to by all three universities.
Yang Yu-hui (楊玉惠), director of the ministry’s Technological and Vocational Education Department, said that she would be happy to see the merger succeed, as long as it would help make the universities more competitive and that there would be no exchange of benefits.
Expenses, faculty and student numbers are expected to remain the same for the three following the merger, Yang Yu-hui said.
Additional reporting by Wu Po-hsuan
There are 77 incidents of Taiwanese travelers going missing in China between January last year and last month, the Straits Exchange Foundation (SEF) said. More than 40 remain unreachable, SEF Secretary-General Luo Wen-jia (羅文嘉) said on Friday. Most of the reachable people in the more than 30 other incidents were allegedly involved in fraud, while some had disappeared for personal reasons, Luo said. One of these people is Kuo Yu-hsuan (郭宇軒), a 22-year-old Taiwanese man from Kaohsiung who went missing while visiting China in August. China’s Taiwan Affairs Office last month said in a news statement that he was under investigation
An aviation jacket patch showing a Formosan black bear punching Winnie the Pooh has become popular overseas, including at an aviation festival held by the Japan Air Self-Defense Force at the Ashiya Airbase yesterday. The patch was designed last year by Taiwanese designer Hsu Fu-yu (徐福佑), who said that it was inspired by Taiwan’s countermeasures against frequent Chinese military aircraft incursions. The badge shows a Formosan black bear holding a Republic of China flag as it punches Winnie the Pooh — a reference to Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) — who is dressed in red and is holding a honey pot with
Celebrations marking Double Ten National Day are to begin in Taipei today before culminating in a fireworks display in Yunlin County on the night of Thursday next week. To start the celebrations, a concert is to be held at the Taipei Dome at 4pm today, featuring a lineup of award-winning singers, including Jody Chiang (江蕙), Samingad (紀曉君) and Huang Fei (黃妃), Taipei tourism bureau official Chueh Yu-ling (闕玉玲) told a news conference yesterday. School choirs, including the Pqwasan na Taoshan Choir and Hngzyang na Matui & Nahuy Children’s Choir, and the Ministry of National Defense Symphony Orchestra, flag presentation unit and choirs,
China is attempting to subsume Taiwanese culture under Chinese culture by promulgating legislation on preserving documents on ties between the Minnan region and Taiwan, a Taiwanese academic said yesterday. China on Tuesday enforced the Fujian Province Minnan and Taiwan Document Protection Act to counter Taiwanese cultural independence with historical evidence that would root out misleading claims, Chinese-language media outlet Straits Today reported yesterday. The act is “China’s first ad hoc local regulations in the cultural field that involve Taiwan and is a concrete step toward implementing the integrated development demonstration zone,” Fujian Provincial Archives deputy director Ma Jun-fan (馬俊凡) said. The documents
RSS