The Ministry of Education and the Overseas Community Affairs Council should conduct a comprehensive review of the government’s New Southbound Talent Policy to improve safeguards of the rights of overseas and international students in Taiwan, the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus told a news conference in Taipei yesterday.
The Democratic Progressive Party government implemented the policy in 2016, with a goal to attract to Taiwan 200,000 applicants of outstanding talent from Southeast Asia, the KMT said.
After 10 years, the cost to taxpayers has been NT$4.2 billion (US$131.72 million), but the retention rate is only 30 percent, it said, adding that the policy has degenerated into a “study-work profit chain” involving intermediaries, lower and mid-tier private universities, and businesses.
Photo: Lo Pei-de, Taipei Times
What was meant to be “coming to Taiwan to study” for foreign students has turned into “coming to Taiwan to work,” with many employed as substitutes at factories, and at retail stores and in the service industry, it said.
KMT caucus secretary-general Lin Pei-hsiang (林沛祥) said Taiwan is gradually shifting from an “island for study” into what critics describe as an “island of student labor.”
Many international students who arrive expecting an education find themselves unable to focus on their studies, instead working long hours in restaurants, hotels and factories, Lin said.
In some cases, they are a form of “disguised migrant labor,” filling gaps in Taiwan’s workforce, he said.
Some lower and mid-tier private universities rely on such students as a financial lifeline, while intermediaries, education providers and businesses form a tightly linked chain of shared interests, he said.
Recruitment campaigns promote the promise of “studying in Taiwan,” but for many, the reality is closer to “working in Taiwan,” he added.
The ministry and the council should undertake a sweeping review of the system — revisiting everything from recruitment practices and oversight of intermediaries to industry-academia programs, student working hours and safeguards of the right to education, the KMT said.
“Policymakers must return to the core mission of education: International students are meant to study, not to plug labor shortages in the service sector,” it said.
It also called on the government to better protect the education and human rights of foreign students, warning that if Taiwan aspires to be a truly international society, it cannot allow a “student labor” model to evolve into another form of exploitation.
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