Subsidies for students at Taiwan’s private universities to stop the crisis
Vice-President William Lai, who made the announcement, is running to succeed Tsai ing-wen. Starting in the second semester of the next academic year, the government will pay part of the fees to stop the decline in university enrolment. For the opposition, this is just an electoral ploy, but the enrolment crisis is affecting the quality of the offer.
Taipei (AsiaNews/Agencies) – Taiwan’s private universities are in crisis and this has become a point of debate in the runup to next year's presidential elections.
Incumbent Vice-President William Lai is running for the Democratic Progressive Party to replace President Tsai Ing-wen, who is not eligible for re-election.
In a recent statement, he announced a student subsidy plan to cover "at least half" of the gap between the tuition fees paid in public and private universities.
The difference is estimated at NT,000 per year (US$ 1,610), so his proposal would be around NT,000 per student (US$ 805).
Although subsidies already exist for economically disadvantaged students, many depend on student loans or part-time jobs to pay their fees, which hurts their educational prospects, this according to Chu Chun-chang, director general of the Department of Higher Education at the Ministry of Education.
Under the proposal, the ministry will subsidise students at private universities by directly deducting the money from the total tuition fees when they pay at the start of each semester.
The plan would cost an estimated NT billion (US$ 485 million) per year, beginning in the second semester of the 2023-2024 academic year. An estimated 473,000 students would benefit.
William Lai's announcement was greeted coldly by his two main rivals for the presidency – Kuomintang leader Hou Yu-ih and former Taipei mayor Ko Wen-je, which are polling neck and neck. Both see it as an electoral ploy.
The crisis of Taiwan’s universities is an issue that the government must deal with, largely stemming from a declining birthrate; 2021 saw the number of students fall below the threshold of one million.
According to official data released at the end of last summer, only 11 Taiwanese universities met their recruitment objective, while 51 universities – 22 public and 29 private – missed it despite an acceptance rate of 98.94 per cent.
Concerned about this trend, the University Admission Committee noted that even highly reputable private universities have been affected by declining enrolments; for example, the Chinese Culture University recruited only 257 students for 2,635 places available.
The crisis is also reflected in the international ranking of universities. More than three quarters of Taiwan's universities fell in the Center for World University Rankings (CWUR), including the country’s most prestigious, the National Taiwan University, which dropped six spots to 102nd.
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23/03/2009
