Could Chinese demand plug Taiwan’s higher education hole?

As a doctoral student from Taiwan studying in this relevant topic, I partly agree with the problems that Taiwan’s HE is facing indicated in this article. However, to discuss ‘whether recruiting Chinese students could solve Taiwan’s HE problems,’ in my opinion, requires at least two-fold analysis. Firstly, as presented in this article, analyze the challenges that current Taiwan’s HE system encounters. Secondly, analyze ‘Taiwan’s Chinese student recruiting policy,’ which does not seemed to be mentioned. To answer the article’s main question, the issue of ‘whether Taiwan is recognized as an independent state’ may not be as important and direct as the issue of ‘the special state-to-state relations’ between Taiwan and China, as the latter leads to all the restrictions and limitations posed by both countries. For example, the ‘Three Restrictions and Six Nos’ posed by Taiwan, the issuing of Taiwan Pass and the recruitment quota set by China, the limitations of Taiwan’s national universities to undertake recruitment activities in China, etc. Therefore, to ‘solve’ Taiwan’s HE problems, it is more than a simple question of ‘open Taiwan’s HE door and the Chinese students will come.’ It is much more complicated (and interesting for researchers for sure) involving both countries. If seen from Taiwan's perspective, the struggle and the power balance among government ministries, HEIs, all the staff within HEIs, and citizens are all involved. Although I could understand that perhaps due to the limitation of the word counts, there may not be enough space to illustrate all these questions. However, it is a pity that none of these issues are pointed out in the article. If being asked the same questions brought up in this article, researchers who are doing this area of research or practitioners in Taiwan's HEIs might give you different replies. Lastly, there is one obvious factual mistake that I would like to point out. The article states that ‘’…Taiwan’s constitution mandates that no less than 15 per cent of the total national budget should be devoted to educational expenditure, Wang explains – although critics say that not enough of this money goes to universities.” In fact, the minimum of 15% of national budget is regulated not only to be spent on ‘education’, but on ‘education, science, and culture’ in total. However, this article in Constitution has been frozen since 1997. Hence, the new Education Expenditures Act was enacted in 2000 and regulated that “the aggregated education expenditures of governments of all levels shall be no less than 21.5% of average net annual revenue over the previous three years of the budgeting year.” In 2011, the percentage increased to 22.5%, and in 2015, it raised to 23%. Nevertheless, the regulation is for all education sectors, not HE only.

I am a native Taiwanese entrepreneur who was educated in Taiwan and America. I now live and work in Washington state of the U.S. Overall, this is an excellent research article even though it might not have addressed some figures precisely as reader DY Yang mentioned in his comments. I have 27 years of experience in U.S. and Taiwan higher education, and I clearly know that most college professors in Taiwan can not even come up with reports as comprehensive as this article. Two Thumbs Up! Tanya T. Gray Co-founder & CEO Access Education LLC