Top universities fail to meet English course standards

Taiwan News 01 June 2018

Peter Chang, commissioner of the National Supervisory Commission of the Control Yuan, said last week that National Taiwan University, National Cheng Kung University, National Tsing Hua University and National Chaio Tung University – four of Taiwan's top-ranked national universities – do not meet the minimum criteria for English course offerings, writes Te’Qin Windham for Taiwan News.

Although they have been offering English courses for years, the total proportion of English-taught courses in these four universities is less than 10% of total courses offered, and will therefore automatically be investigated.

The Ministry of Education has also provided large sums of educational funds in the past to these universities. Since 2007, it has promoted the ‘higher education programmes’, which has included a budget of TWD4 billion (US$133 million) in funding for the four universities. Chang has said that they will investigate how the ratios of the four universities were calculated by the Ministry of Education and what efforts the universities are taking to improve the environment for teaching English. They will also look at the reason why the proportion of English teaching of the four universities is less than 10%.
Full report on the Taiwan News site

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