Taiwanese Higher Education occupies a liminal space in global academia, in much the same way it does in geopolitics. Yes, it’s a Chinese-speaking, Confucian country and so its national academic carries with it a great deal of DNA that is common to the region. At the same time, for obvious reasons, it is much less China-focused, and has much closer relations with American and other non-Asian academic cultures than the average Asian system. The result is a national educational culture which is unlike any other in the region.

Taiwan is in some senses very representative of East Asian higher education. Like many countries in the region, government focus for most of the past two decades has been on so-called “excellence” initiatives focused on research-intensity and “world-class university status”. Like Japan and South Korea, the country faces a very significant demographic challenge, compounded by an unwillingness of governments to allow higher tuition fees.

But in other ways it is very different. Unlike many countries in the region, the government has been diligent in pushing responsibility for academic qualities down to institutions themselves rather than rely on governmental steering. And the Democratic Progressive Party, in power now for nearly a decade, has also been relentless in trying to focus institutional priorities on student outcomes and institutional social responsibility, neither of which is common in East Asia.

Today my guest is Angela Yung-Chi Hou. She is currently a Professor of National Chengchi University in Taipei and for nearly two decades has been the foremost English-language scholar of Taiwanese higher education. Bu her career has not been restricted to Academia; for much of the past few years she was also head of the Higher Education Evaluation and Accreditation Council of Taiwan, which is one of the most important bodies in the Taiwanese higher ed ecosystem. That makes her an ideal guide to the history and politics of higher education in Taiwan.

I think you’ll enjoy this interview. I was particularly intrigued by Angela’s views on the politics of higher education in Taiwan and how significant ideological differences on education between the DPP and the Kuomintang have shaped government policy over the past few years, and in particular in the way that research excellence programs have morphed into something less competitive, less output oriented, and more focused on students and communities. It’s not a common story in Asian higher education, but it’s an important one nonetheless.

But enough from me: let’s hear from Angela.

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The World of Higher Education Podcast
Episode 2.20 | Taiwanese Higher Education

Transcript

Alex Usher (AU): Angela, let’s talk a little bit about the history of higher education in Taiwan. The oldest and most prestigious university, the National Taiwan University, began its life as one of the Japanese imperial universities. Then the country gained a number of other institutions with very different histories and traditions when, some mainland universities fled to the island in 1949. How did those two different academic cultures coexist with one another and how did they set the pattern for the system over the last 70 years?

Angela Yung Chi Hou (AYCH): Thank you so much for these questions. First of all, I think I have to mention that Taiwan is a very diverse society. There are a lot of the immigrants from Mainland China, from Southeast Asia are coming to Taiwan. So, though it seems that from 1949, that the new government actually started to take over the powers of the whole system, that is not a huge challenge for the Taiwanese people, or even the universities get used to the different system because they learn how to adapt to the different system and how to survive from the different government. Before that, the Japanese government they already established a kind of system for higher ed as you mentioned that at the National Taiwan University actually was very first established by the Japanese government. But after 1949, in Mainland China, a lot of the good universities, prestigious universities, not just the national universities, as well as several private universities has been re-established by the central government. Though there still is a little bit different culture between them. But at the same time, as above that I mentioned, not just the Japanese culture and the Chinese transitions, but at the same time, the Taiwan society and what the government’s mandate has been influenced by is the Americans. They’re the superpower. They evolve not just the education, but the various areas. So, you can see that is quite interesting to see that the Taiwanese system is a very interesting hybrid mode with combinations of the Japanese cultures, the Chinese traditions, as well as American influence.

AU: The American influence comes from many Taiwanese students going there for graduate school, and so they bring back those traditions with them. Was that what was going on in the fifties and sixties?

AYCH: You are right. But before that, still the government have very strong powers in Taiwan then have very strong relationships between American government. Through the education is the best way for them to collaborate with each other. So though so at the same time the Taiwanese students has been encouraged to go abroad and the first choice of options is America. Then of course they bring a lot of the American high education ideas back to Taiwan. You could see through the institutional governance, by the faculty developments of those kind of things, even the curriculum, We use that the models of the American system and even the QA system quality assurance system. We use the American accreditation system.

AU: Let’s talk about quality assurance because I think one of the really interesting things about Taiwan is that like a lot of countries, there was a wave of new private universities in the 1980s and 1990s but as you say, they were still pretty heavily regulated directly by the Kuomintang government in that period. Then as we go into the 1990s and 2000s though, the country passes from a state-controlled process of quality assurance to a university-based process of quality assurance. That seems rare in global higher education because governments have a hard time giving up control. So how did that process of standing back or of retreating from government control happen? What were the preconditions to this shift and how successful was it?

AYCH: The quality assurance systems was established formally in 2005. So the end of the 1990s and the beginning of the 2000s, the universities, particularly for the private universities, they actually just requested the government to give them more and more academic freedom. That’s just one thing that the things that the government did to regulate the whole system. They hoped that the government would give them more autonomies to develop the programs, the courses, or even to recruit a faculty members. The government tried to respond to this kind of request. But at the same time, they hope that since you want to have more control over management by yourself, you have to develop your internal quality assurance system. So it started at that. Internally, you have to really ensure the quality of the whole system, or even think through your governance, think through your curriculum, things for your faculty development, and etc. The national accreditor here at Higher Education Evaluation Council of Taiwan was established in 2005 under the University Revised Act. At the same time you were given small academic freedoms, you could really develop your own futures, because at the time, we tried to apply the American Carnegie Classification System, you see the different type of universities but it failed. Why it failed? Because all the universities don’t want to be like the teaching type.

AU: Everybody wants to be R1.

AYCH: They want to be the tier one because they think that it would give more funding. If I’m categorized as a tier two, for the funding competitions that I will be the loser. So, that why the government thinks that through the QA system or even through the excellent initiative we’re going to talk about, they think that as the university, probably you will be starting to get your own futures, your own resources, and your strength, right? Or your potential development capacity. And then finally you could recognize who you are.

AU: In your book about a shift in Taiwanese higher education around 2006 towards a golden age in the pursuit of excellence. As you just said, obviously the change in the quality assurance system was part of that, but there was also the introduction of an excellence initiative, very similar to the ones started by countries like Japan and France and Germany around the same time in order to chase world class university status for at least a few institutions. How well did that go? How much money was spent on these projects? In the end, do very much to vault Taiwanese universities into the global top class?

AYCH: Thank you so much for those questions. After the 2000s set in, all the Asians governments realized that they have to invest a lot of resources into the higher education. Launching initiatives is one of the very popular options for most of the Asian government, including Taiwan. At the time, the government invested but in comparison to other Japanese governments of the China governments, it seems not so much that Taiwan invest in this system through the excellent initiatives. Generally, the amount that they invested in this initiative is US dollars, I think 330 million. It means that each year that we invest that around the 330 million us dollars in selected universities. Taiwan higher as a total is that would be around 150 universities, but only selected universities will be able to have this kind of the qualification to apply for this kind of competitive funding. You see only around 10 to 12 universities have been allocated this kind of funding. Of course, they still have to apply and then to show their strength and then to tell the governments what the projects are because the funding is in two five-year phases. So, you have to really tell the government how exactly within these five years, what kind of goal you’re going or going to achieve? Research is one of that, but I also have to tell the governments how much they’re going to enhance the teaching quality. The government also encouraged them, particularly, those selected university recipients of the excellent research, recipients to demonstrate their outcomes of the internationalization. So, it means how many international students you recruit within this, or you’re going to recruit. And then. How are you going to recruit a foreign faculty members? For what I found within these 10 years, indeed the numbers of the top 500 universities increased. At the time, Taiwan only had around four or five universities in the global rankings, but after the 10 years, it means the two phases of the excellent initiatives is around 8 to 10 or 12, depends on the different ranking system. It’s still very challenging. To be in the top 100. So, this is why we always ask the government to invest more. If you want to move into the top 100, that is not enough.

AU: So now after 2016, you had two rounds of research-oriented excellence programs, 2005-2010, 2011-2016, and then this gets replaced by a new policy called the Sprout Project Sustained Progress and the Rise of Universities in Taiwan. In your book, you call this an era of equity and university social responsibility. This seems like a big policy shift. Can you explain what the new plan was meant to tackle? Has it achieved its aims in the years since 2016?

AYCH: The year 2016 is really the year means that Taiwan had at moving started to the different directions. I have to say that is due to the new government and the DPP, Democratic progressives parties, that came to the power. Immediately, they tried to shift the focus from the pursuit of the world class universities into the students’ learning rights, and then also the quality of the teachings. They hope that could be enhanced more, and then also to make sure the student are employable. Because around 2015 or 2014, still, some of the papers with some of the scholars try to argue that pursuing a world class university is really good for the Taiwan higher ed, but then how much benefit that the student could really have? Maybe those university students at the selected university or even a student at the teaching excellent initiative university probably received a very good teaching resources but how about breadth of the university? So, I told you that based on these two initiatives, there are 12 in research excellence and the 30 in a teaching absence, right? But how about the rest of the 100 universities? But how about the students? Due to that the DPPs, the new government’s philosophy, no matter which university study you should receive, there should be similar learning resources. So that’s why the policy shift and then the funding allocated so that all 153 universities would be able to apply to the funding.

AU: Angela, let’s talk about the politics of higher education in Taiwan. You just talked about how there was a big shift when the Kuomintang ceded power to the DPP after 2016. You go from I guess an ideology of excellence to an ideology of equity. Has that stayed the same over time? Has that been an enduring feature of Taiwanese politics? And for instance, how much did higher education and those two different views of higher education play out in the recent elections?

AYCH: Thank you so much for this question. Now I am so free to answer this question. Honestly speaking, politicians always try to promise their voters what they’re going to do, and then they’re going to share the resources equally, etc. Then on the other hand, it’s still promised that they will do their best to enhance the quality of the system, will ensure that the students employability. Under this kind of scenario, for higher education internally means the university is given some autonomies to really design the program and et cetera, but for the institutional governance, it means that the governments usually will monitor all kinds of the managements of within the university. They’re still strongly regulated by the government. So, no matter which government actually in power, they always tries to – we couldn’t say control – but tries to have the greater influence in education, because you see, this is a Confucian society. Through the educations, we will have power. Because we will change your mind. So, you see before presidential elections, there are a lot of the arguments about why now the DPP (the governments) change our basic education content, why they didn’t want our new generation to read the histories of the Chinese governments or historical developments over the 5,000 years old. They try to reduce the content. This is a Chinese way of mind the things that as soon as we want to maintain our power, the best way is to control the education, no matter which level through the basic or through higher ed.

AU: One of the ways the government can control institutions, of course, is through finances. One thing that struck me reading your book was the extent to which tuition fees have ceased to be a major source of university income in the sense that institutional tuition fee changes have to be approved by the ministry. I think on average, over the last 15 or 20 years, only 3 or 4 institutions a year have been able to get these fee increases. So, this must make university financing very precarious. How have universities handled this situation?

AYCH: That issues been almost 20 years, right? That’s why I told you that the politics always play a very significant factors in this issue. So this is why no matter the public university or even a private university (who rely on the tuitions more than the public university), why over the years, you could see now only few university has been approved to raise their tuition fee. That is one thing. But for the private university, I think it’s a more serious problem. So, you could see for those long history and more with a prestigious private university since 10 years ago, they started to actually focus on the donations and then they try to develop their relationship with their alumni. In hope that they could give more and more different resources in order to inject into that university’s resources. But for the public university at the same time, they face the same issues. They try to collaborate with their industry. Take a Taiwan National University, we have a lot of the IT big companies. So they tries to work with those big company and then the that they see that if they could actually share their resources one way there’s maybe the students were given more and more opportunities to have the internships. But on the other hand, they also hope that through this kind of industry collaborations with those big IT company that could fill that financial gap. Each year, all electricity and the water, all things are raised, even status the staff, the salary raised but the tuitions is still at the same rate. So, this is a very hard for the most of the universities.

AU: Taiwan is one of a number of Asian countries which has experienced a long decline in the birth rate. So youth populations and therefore university student populations are starting to decline. When I was doing some background reading for this interview, I saw an estimate from just 3 years ago that 50 universities might need to close by 2025 in order to keep the system healthy. But at the same time, you still have a growing high-tech industry and it needs masters and PhD level graduates in order to maintain the country’s advanced manufacturing. So, you’ve got demand for higher education pulling in two directions at once. How do you think the system will adapt to this continuing demographic decline?

AYCH: I don’t know if I would give you the good answers, but at this moment what the government is trying to do is try to encourage that those no matter the research universities or even some teaching universities to attract the students from other countries, particularly from India. So you can see like the Tsinghua University, if you look at their engineering faculties, or even computer science faculty, at the PhD level, probably 80 percent of them are Indian students. We, at this moment, we cannot have the Chinese students. So that’s why and then the government encouraged those top research university, to try to attract some of best students from the India, Malaysia, Titan and etc. But for the private in the rural areas, maybe they face more and more challenges. So, you could see that in the long run probably is more than up to 50 universities were forced to closed in the future. So that is bad. Though that the universities work very hard to attract the international students. So how exactly is that? The tallents industry or even the national developments, I think, they’re still taking time to observe if they could become our human resources in the future. Taiwanese governments have very strict immigration policy. So, it means that we would attract you to come into Taiwan to study, get your degrees, but we do not welcome you to stay after your graduation. Maybe the new governments are more wise enough to get a better solutions for that.

AU: Let’s hope. One thing that you didn’t touch on in your book, but I know will be of interest to some of our North American listeners, is how Taiwan has tried to increase participation amongst its Indigenous Peoples. So, there’s a College of Indigenous Studies at National Dong Hwa University. And there’s been experiments with set asides of student spots, quotas of spots at particular institutions. What else can you tell us about attempts to raise participant, participation rates of Indigenous Peoples?

AYCH: Since the 2000s, and then the indigenous people’s right, all kinds of rights and participations in the social developments or national development, and then the educational setting, there has been protectives under that the government’s indigenous law, because they hope that they could be given the same opportunities to participate in that national development. So, sometimes we could say that it’s like the Americans Affirmative Action. One thing that there was set up certain kinds of the student quotas for them to enroll. On the other hand, the university has been encouraged to provide certain kinds of the programs like in law for example, a lot of indigenous peoples they probably need more and more of those kinds of the knowledge in order to protect their own rights, et cetera or like the business, or even in education. So, if you look at the Dong Hwa University, they have the teacher’s education particular For the indigenous people, they hope that it could go back to your hometown and then being a teacher and teach the next generations. The government through policy and just encouraging university do and then also they try to save a certain kind of the core task for those indigenous people, encourage them, they could continue to participate in all kinds of the areas of the national developments. But at the same time, the government, they also provide a lot of the scholarship programs for those indigenous people and then hope that they won’t be worried about some financial issues because some families probably cannot really afford it. So, a scholarship program or even through any kinds of the application because the university will have the different kind of applications like study abroad programs or even any kind of scholarships, internship programs. The indigenous people always could be one of our first priority.

AU: What is it that makes you optimistic about higher education in Taiwan? If we were to do this interview again 20 years from now, what do you think will be the point that people will remember about Taiwan education? What will be the greatest point of success? And what will people look back to for the 2020s and say, “boy, those were the policies we followed that, that made the difference?”

AYCH: When I look at this question, I try to review what exactly has been gone through over the past 20 years. I think the one thing that I feel quite strongly is about academic freedom. Though the government in terms of administration, definitely set a lot of the regulations for that the university have to follow and et cetera. But for what exactly the research you want to do or what exactly you want to teach, we are fully being respected by the university and then the university won’t involve or intervenes what exactly kind of the research or even what exactly is that content that we. going to teach in the classroom. So I think this is different from the other Chinese society, probably there has more restrictions, but in Taiwan, I think, honestly, I have to say that is very good values because our minds won’t be limited to some area, we could do whatever we have. Though we don’t know if your research will be valued by the government or not, but they won’t restrict you. I think this is one thing. Another thing is, I think over the years between what I call the golden era, we had more chances to work with the different partners in the different countries. You have to work with the different countries, the different university, and then see if anything’s innovators could be done within your university through the research or even instead of teaching. So, this one I quite I’m so grateful that I could have so many friends around the whole world, including you, right? And another one is we really care about the students, from my perspectives, and we hope that not just our own goods, we hope that what is that we have could be continued. In Chinese society, the Taiwanese professors, I think, take care of students quite more. we’re happy to share what we have with the students, and we hope that no matter what exactly we do, we’re very student centered. I think that would be the number three values that I have over the past 20 years that I have. And of course, finally, the HEAT Act, the independent accreditor. We have professional independent accreditors. Because we try to let the university understand that accountability is still one of their responsibilities. They have to demonstrate what exactly they’ve done to the Taiwan society.

AU: Angela, thanks so much for being with us today.

AYCH: Thank you for your invitation.

AU: And it just remains for me to thank our excellent producers, Tiffany MacLennan, Sam Pufek, and you, our listeners, for tuning in. If you have any comments or suggestions for future episodes, please don’t hesitate to get in touch with us at podcast@ higheredstrategy.com. We’ll be taking next week off, but tune in March 7th, when our guest will be Courtney Brown, vice president of impact and planning at higher education, super donor, the Lumina foundation. And we’ll be talking about what comes next for the organization after the year 2025 and the end of its two decade push to raise American higher education attainment rates to 60%. Bye for now.

*This podcast transcript was generated using an AI transcription service with limited editing. Please forgive any errors made through this service.