Internationalisation begins to bear fruit

It is time for Taiwan to support developing countries in training their young people, in the same way that Western countries such as America have done for Taiwan in the past, according to Teresa Ju, director of the Taiwan Education Center in Da Nang in central Vietnam.

Decades ago, the Taiwan government and Taiwanese families sent their young people to the West for a better quality education. Nowadays, the trend is being reversed – Taiwan has emerged as an attractive destination for international students.

“Before, we [Taiwanese] went abroad only to receive higher education, now we should go abroad to provide higher education,” Ju, a professor at Lunghwa University of Science and Technology, a private institution in Taiwan, told University World News.

Like many of Taiwan’s baby boomers, Ju went to the United States in the late 1960s and earned a PhD from Nova Southeastern University. After more than 20 years of working in US industry she returned to Taiwan to pursue an academic career, first at Foo-Yin University and later at Shu-Te University and Lunghwa University of Science and Technology.

Then, 18 months ago, Taiwan’s Ministry of Education provided funds to Lunghwa to establish the Taiwan Education Center and a Taiwan-Vietnam Higher Education Cooperation Center in Da Nang, with Ju at the head.

The aim is to attract Vietnamese students to Taiwan’s universities.

Growth in international student numbers

There are some 166 public and private government-accredited universities and colleges in Taiwan and, with the country's declining birth rate, they are hoping that overseas students will shore up student enrolment.

According to official data, some 48,000 international students enrolled in Taiwan’s universities in 2012. The figure has doubled since 2007 and quadrupled since 2005.

This growth is seen as a result of efforts by policy-makers, university administrators and faculty, many of whom studied abroad from the 1970s to the 1990s and then returned to work in their homeland.

Education Minister Wu Ching-ji told local Taiwan media last September that the government would step up efforts to attract students from abroad in a bid to make the country a hub of higher education in East Asia.

Internationalisation is also the major component of the Taiwan government’s higher education Excellence Initiative, launched in 2006. The second five-year phase began last year with an allocation of TWD50 billion (US$1.7 billion).

Taiwan expects to attract about 130,000 international students by 2020 and is hoping that at least one institution will break into the world’s top 50 universities.

Vietnam a major source

In recent years, Vietnam has become the largest source of international students in Taiwan. This year, some 4,000 Vietnamese are studying in Taiwan, including 500 who receive scholarships from the Vietnamese government and around 100 with scholarships from Taiwan.

This is in part due to the efforts of Taiwan in Vietnam. Last month, a ‘Study in Taiwan’ seminar held by the Taiwan Education Center in Da Nang attracted more than 600 students from 19 provinces in central Vietnam.

The centre, which promotes study in Taiwan and the Chinese language, is part of an ambitious Taiwan government scheme, the Foundation for International Cooperation in Higher Education of Taiwan, or FICHET, launched in 2005. There are other education centres in India and Mongolia.

FICHET also organises education fairs and conferences on international student recruitment. In late October, the education ministry organised higher education fairs in Surabaya and Jakarta to strengthen cultural and educational exchange between Taiwan and Indonesia. The events attracted 40 prominent Taiwan universities and organisations.

The Taiwan-Vietnam Higher Education Cooperation Center facilitates information exchange between universities in Taiwan and Vietnam to promote academic cooperation.

For example, the University of Technology in Da Nang sent 14 faculty members to Taiwan last year, to cooperate on technology and engineering research, facilitated by the centre.

In future, Ju expects more academic cooperation activities sponsored by Taiwan or by both sides. But for now there is a greater focus on attracting students.

Students from Asia

For students from Asia, it does not take too long to get accustomed to student life in Taiwan because “we have similar cultures”, said Ju. Nonetheless, she pointed out that Mandarin Chinese is still necessary for international students “to adapt to and enjoy Taiwan life”.

“It does not take me and my friends from Malaysia or Korea too long to get accustomed to new life here because our cultures and traditions are almost the same,” noted Thanh Binh (21) from Vietnam, a second-year student in finance and banking at Chaoyang University of Technology in Taichung, central Taiwan. The course is taught in Chinese.

She told University World News that she chose Taiwan because of its “high quality education but also competitive tuition fees and living expenses”.

Chaoyang University of Technology only began recruiting students from abroad seven years ago. To date it has attracted some 900 international students, pursuing both English and Chinese programmes at bachelor and masters levels.

Many graduate courses in Taiwan are delivered in English or a mix of English and Chinese and Taiwan’s Ministry of Education is also funding lecturers specialised in teaching Chinese as a foreign language at 16 universities in Vietnam.

Staff with international experience

“Most of [the lecturers] graduated from the US, Japan or Europe. They have experienced the same difficulties [as us] and they understand what we need,” said Nomingerel Davaadorj (28) from Mongolia, one of the first batch of international students in the PhD programme in business administration delivered in English at the Chinese Culture University in Taipei.

Nomingerel is one of just 500 Mongolian students currently at universities in Taiwan.

The education ministry and other state organisations such as the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the National Science Council and Academia Sinica, offer scholarships for targeted international students, and some Taiwanese universities have a budget for scholarships to international students that are particularly attractive to developing countries that want to upgrade the qualifications of their academics.

Ton Duc Thang University in Ho Chi Minh City, in cooperation with the Taiwan Education Center in Da Nang, has sent 19 young lecturers on full scholarships to study for masters or PhDs at the Chinese Culture University.

For developing-country students, such arrangements provide the opportunity to study subjects relevant to emerging economies in a globalised world.

One of the 19 Vietnamese lecturers, Phi Phung, who is studying for a masters in international trade, told University World News: “All of us are studying ‘frontier’ subjects, like international trade, international business, urban planning or biotechnology, which are necessary for my university in particular, and the country’s economy in general.”

She added that there were more than 20 other young faculty and dozens of students from her home university studying at other Taiwanese universities.