The Ministry of Education yesterday reminded universities that members of examination committees for master’s degrees should be appointed based on academic professionalism and peer consensus.
The statement was issued after the Taiwan Statebuilding Party questioned the qualifications of examination committee members who had evaluated the master’s thesis of Kaohsiung City Councilor Lee Ya-ching (李雅靜) of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT).
The Taiwan Statebuilding Party’s Kaohsiung chapter on Saturday wrote on Facebook that late KMT Kaohsiung City Council speaker Hsu Kun-yuan (許崑源) and former KMT legislator Ho Tsai-feng (侯彩鳳) were members of the committee that examined Lee’s thesis at National Sun Yat-sen University’s Institute of Public Affairs Management.
Photo: Rachel Lin, Taipei Times
The ministry yesterday cited Article 8 of the Degree Conferral Act (學位授予法), which states that members of master’s degree examination committees must “have done specialized study in the research field of the student” and meet one of four qualifications.
These qualifications are being a current or former professor, associate professor or assistant professor; being an academician at Academia Sinica, or a current or former Academia Sinica research fellow, associate research fellow or assistant research fellow; having a doctoral degree and significant academic accomplishments; or having expertise in a rare or highly specialized research field or professional practice, and significant accomplishments academically or professionally.
The criteria for determining the third and fourth qualifications should be set at a department, graduate institute or college affairs meeting or at a degree program affairs meeting, the ministry said.
Committee members who meet the third or fourth qualification should be appointed carefully, with academic professionalism and peer consensus, to avoid harming the quality of higher education and university autonomy, it said.
Chang Po-yang (張博洋), deputy director of the Taiwan Statebuilding Party’s news department, yesterday said that Ho’s and Hsu’s educational backgrounds fell short of the act’s appointment criteria, and the university and Lee should provide an explanation.
Kaohsiung’s residents cannot accept local factions intervening in university autonomy and academic ethics, he said, calling on the ministry to investigate.
The university yesterday released its enforcement rules for master’s degree examinations, which include the same qualifications for examination committee members as the Degree Conferral Act.
Hsu and Ho should be considered to have fulfilled the fourth qualification, the university said, adding that it would offer details at a later time.
The incident concerning Lee is the latest controversy over the graduate thesis of an elected official after allegations of plagiarism against Kaohsiung City Councilor and KMT Kaohsiung mayoral by-election candidate Jane Lee (李眉蓁) first surfaced last week.
Amid mounting accusations that she had plagiarized her thesis, Jane Lee on Thursday said she would give up her master’s degree.
Additional reporting by Fang Chih-hsien and Huang Hsu-lei
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