Stronger safeguards against plagiarism must be implemented and theses in technical fields should be eliminated, university and college presidents said at an event in Taipei yesterday in response to a rash of plagiarism scandals in the run-up the nine-in-one elections in November.
They made the proposals at the Ministry of Education’s 112th national university and vocational college president’s convention.
Department of Higher Education Director-General Chu Chun-chang (朱俊彰) told the event that the ministry is to discuss potential implementation of the proposals with the associations involved in higher education.
Photo: CNA
Institutions should be allowed to confer a master of arts degree or its equivalent by means other than having students submit a thesis, said Liao Ching-jung (廖慶榮), president of privately owned Yuan Ze University in Taoyuan.
Some institutions of higher learning in the West already enable students to substitute thesis writing with completing extra classes — which are generally worth six academic credits — or other specialized tasks, Liao said.
Several Taiwanese universities and vocational colleges accept practice reports in lieu of theses, he said, referring to reports demonstrating that the degree-seeker understands and can practice the discipline.
Allegations of falsified practice reports are made with enough frequency to keep ethics committees very busy, Liao said.
Thesis writing is not needed in vocational fields and could be replaced by students completing a specialized course, Tunghai University president Chang Kuo-en (張國恩) said.
Replacing theses with special courses would give flexibility to institutions and teach students problem-solving skills, Chang said.
Ethics committees should be a standing organization at academic institutions supported by separate panels consisting of subject-matter experts, said Her Ming-guo (何明果), president of the Association of Private Colleges and Universities.
Institutions should make theses public to facilitate transparency and sealing of theses should only occur in exceptional situations, he said.
Theses that made use of classified government information are sealed with cause, he said, adding that students must otherwise request access be restricted before their oral defense.
An essay competition jointly organized by a local writing society and a publisher affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) might have contravened the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例), the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said on Thursday. “In this case, the partner organization is clearly an agency under the CCP’s Fujian Provincial Committee,” MAC Deputy Minister and spokesperson Liang Wen-chieh (梁文傑) said at a news briefing in Taipei. “It also involves bringing Taiwanese students to China with all-expenses-paid arrangements to attend award ceremonies and camps,” Liang said. Those two “characteristics” are typically sufficient
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