by Audrey Shon
Earlier in March, Lan Yang Institute of Technology in Yilan issued a notification to the press that they will stop accepting new students after September 2021. The Ministry of Education has received their application to shut down the school and will provide full assistance for the process. The principle emphasizes that there are still approximately 300 pupils in the institute and he will do everything he can to preserve the students’ rights.
In recent years, many higher education institutes are facing shutdown, transformation, or mergers due to the impact of the declining birth rate. These schools, like Lan Yang, were all once prosperous with thousands of students on campus. However, the decreasing number of applicants due to the decreasing number of children born every year leads to a lower registration rate, and therefore less tuition revenue and other practical obstacles to regular operations. The Innovative Transformation Policy, adopted in 2015, consists of strategies for collaboration between university and industry, university mergers, university closures, and a re-shaping of the university paradigm. This policy has begun implementation with continual evaluations.
Other than Taiwan, Japan, Korea, and even the United States are all facing similar problems. Japan takes action similar to Taiwan by observing the performance of each school with warnings to the schools at high risk. The Korean government acts more rigorously by holding educational assessments and speeding up the shutdown of many institutes. The U.S. government, in contrast, trusts the free market, that is, they leave the decision up to the consumers, which are the students, to decide which school they want to enroll in, and therefore school mergers or shutdowns seem to be privately handled with little government intervention.
In recent years, many higher education institutes are facing shutdown, transformation, or mergers due to the impact of the declining birth rate. These schools, like Lan Yang, were all once prosperous with thousands of students on campus. However, the decreasing number of applicants due to the decreasing number of children born every year leads to a lower registration rate, and therefore less tuition revenue and other practical obstacles to regular operations. The Innovative Transformation Policy, adopted in 2015, consists of strategies for collaboration between university and industry, university mergers, university closures, and a re-shaping of the university paradigm. This policy has begun implementation with continual evaluations.
Other than Taiwan, Japan, Korea, and even the United States are all facing similar problems. Japan takes action similar to Taiwan by observing the performance of each school with warnings to the schools at high risk. The Korean government acts more rigorously by holding educational assessments and speeding up the shutdown of many institutes. The U.S. government, in contrast, trusts the free market, that is, they leave the decision up to the consumers, which are the students, to decide which school they want to enroll in, and therefore school mergers or shutdowns seem to be privately handled with little government intervention.
The teachers from the university being shut down in a press conference promoting their opinion, photograph by Audrey Shon
The National Students’ Union of Taiwan has been tracking these trends and trying to assist the students at institutes facing shut-down since one of the organization’s major concerns is to preserve the rights of university students. Tim Huang, the executive director of NSUT, says that they will focus on whether the students’ rights are preserved. Most of the schools are in the situation of facing shutdown instead of transformation, and there were many cases in which the students' rights were violated. Some students fail to transfer to other schools, while others who succeed still have to face many obstacles such as failing to receive waiver credits or failing to transfer to a similar department as their original major. In some serious situations, some even didn’t receive their bachelor’s degrees because of these shutdowns.
The union proposes a series of possible solutions, hoping that the institutional and governmental authorities will take reference from the student’s viewpoint. They hope that the Ministry of Education will be able to issue a list of universities in danger one or two years in advance to give both the students and the institutes enough time to react. In addition, the union claims that the closure of a certain college should not be decided only by the board of directors arbitrarily but should go through a serious process of examinations conducted by the external bodies. “Taking care of the students is the priority for the NSUT association; our committee has offices around the whole island, each consists of students from universities in different regions, and they will track the operation of neighboring schools,” Huang says. “We hope to build strong connections between each university so that students will get to know the situations in other schools and will be able to share experiences.” Huang points out that most of the schools facing shutdown are those with smaller student populations and fewer resources, so it is of vital importance that NSUT assists them by increasing media exposure and helping the students to negotiate with both the school and the government.
Huang says that he agrees that the shutdown of some universities is inevitable and understandable since everyone knows that there are indeed too many universities in this country. “Higher education is not a necessity in the general public’s daily life. The education budget will be more meaningful if it is used to strengthen the learning experiences for primary and middle education, instead of just helping the operation of some schools not functioning well.”
The union proposes a series of possible solutions, hoping that the institutional and governmental authorities will take reference from the student’s viewpoint. They hope that the Ministry of Education will be able to issue a list of universities in danger one or two years in advance to give both the students and the institutes enough time to react. In addition, the union claims that the closure of a certain college should not be decided only by the board of directors arbitrarily but should go through a serious process of examinations conducted by the external bodies. “Taking care of the students is the priority for the NSUT association; our committee has offices around the whole island, each consists of students from universities in different regions, and they will track the operation of neighboring schools,” Huang says. “We hope to build strong connections between each university so that students will get to know the situations in other schools and will be able to share experiences.” Huang points out that most of the schools facing shutdown are those with smaller student populations and fewer resources, so it is of vital importance that NSUT assists them by increasing media exposure and helping the students to negotiate with both the school and the government.
Huang says that he agrees that the shutdown of some universities is inevitable and understandable since everyone knows that there are indeed too many universities in this country. “Higher education is not a necessity in the general public’s daily life. The education budget will be more meaningful if it is used to strengthen the learning experiences for primary and middle education, instead of just helping the operation of some schools not functioning well.”