The Ministry of Education (MOE) should investigate politicians whose education credentials have come under scrutiny to uphold the integrity of academia, Changhua County Councilor Huang Sheng-lu (黃盛祿) said on Thursday.
Huang’s comments followed allegations that Kaohsiung mayoral by-election candidate Jane Lee (李眉蓁) of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) had plagiarized 96 percent of her master’s thesis.
Academia and politicians serve each other, as politicians need higher education to win greater support, while universities reap political and economic benefits from having alumni in politics, Huang said.
Photo: Rachel Lin, Taipei Times
Huang cited former KMT legislator Yu Yueh-hsia (游月霞) as an example, saying that she only had a vocational high school degree prior to serving as a lawmaker, and after her election, she earned a master’s degree in administrative management from National Changhua Normal University.
Union of Private School Educators president Yu Jung-hui (尤榮輝) said that Taiwan’s higher education system is showing signs of commercialization, especially in master’s degree courses offered to working people.
He said that the intent of the program — allowing people to pursue a degree while working — was good, but such programs run the risk of rubber-stamping academic degrees.
Universities are pandering to part-time students, lowering standards so they can more easily complete studies and obtain degrees, he said.
Working people have less time for studies or to write a thesis in addition to their full-time jobs, leading to the appearance of “essay mills,” where students turn in theses on topics that are incompatible with their subject of study or resorting to outright plagiarism, Yu Jung-hui said.
Schools need students and the students — who are often politicians, government officials and business executives — need the degree to “gold-plate” their credentials, he said.
Professors are prone to employ lax grading standards for these types of students, as politicians could expand their social network or provide economic benefits for their school or department, he said.
Yu Jung-hui said that these programs must institute tougher standards to prevent universities from helping to create fraudulent academic credentials and being seen as degree peddlers.
He added that the public and the ministry should address the deterioration of morals in higher education.
Over the past five years, there have been 17 incidents in which educational degrees have been revoked due to thesis plagiarism, the ministry said.
The university and professors should take responsibility for the issue, the ministry said, adding that how a university prevents incidents would be important when the ministry reviews universities’ applications for new colleges, student recruitment programs or government subsidies.
The ministry said that in the most extreme cases, it could refuse departments that have failed to institute measures to prevent plagiarism from applying for subsidies.
The ministry said that it is considering establishing a digital comparison system that would use the National Central Library’s archived theses database as a source, adding that the system could assist universities in identifying plagiarism.
A magnitude 6.4 earthquake struck off the coast of Hualien County in eastern Taiwan at 7pm yesterday, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. The epicenter of the temblor was at sea, about 69.9km south of Hualien County Hall, at a depth of 30.9km, it said. There were no immediate reports of damage resulting from the quake. The earthquake’s intensity, which gauges the actual effect of a temblor, was highest in Taitung County’s Changbin Township (長濱), where it measured 5 on Taiwan’s seven-tier intensity scale. The quake also measured an intensity of 4 in Hualien, Nantou, Chiayi, Yunlin, Changhua and Miaoli counties, as well as
Taiwan is to have nine extended holidays next year, led by a nine-day Lunar New Year break, the Cabinet announced yesterday. The nine-day Lunar New Year holiday next year matches the length of this year’s holiday, which featured six extended holidays. The increase in extended holidays is due to the Act on the Implementation of Commemorative and Festival Holidays (紀念日及節日實施條例), which was passed early last month with support from the opposition Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Taiwan People’s Party. Under the new act, the day before Lunar New Year’s Eve is also a national holiday, and Labor Day would no longer be limited
COMMITMENTS: The company had a relatively low renewable ratio at 56 percent and did not have any goal to achieve 100 percent renewable energy, the report said Pegatron Corp ranked the lowest among five major final assembly suppliers in progressing toward Apple Inc’s commitment to be 100 percent carbon neutral by 2030, a Greenpeace East Asia report said yesterday. While Apple has set the goal of using 100 percent renewable energy across its entire business, supply chain and product lifecycle by 2030, carbon emissions from electronics manufacturing are rising globally due to increased energy consumption, it said. Given that carbon emissions from its supply chain accounted for more than half of its total emissions last year, Greenpeace East Asia evaluated the green transition performance of Apple’s five largest final
The first tropical storm of the year in the western North Pacific, Wutip (蝴蝶), has formed over the South China Sea and is expected to move toward Hainan Island off southern China, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said today. The agency said a tropical depression over waters near the Paracel and Zhongsha islands strengthened into a tropical storm this morning. The storm had maximum sustained winds near its center of 64.8kph, with peak gusts reaching 90kph, it said. Winds at Beaufort scale level 7 — ranging from 50kph to 61.5kph — extended up to 80km from the center, it added. Forecaster Kuan Hsin-ping
RSS