Taiwan ups drive to attract foreign students, researchers

Over the past year the current government in Taiwan stepped up its recruitment drive in Asia to bring in more foreign students and researchers to fulfil the demands of its semiconductor industry which is seeking to maintain its global lead. This trend is in line with other advanced countries.

Talent shortages have been cited for years as the main challenge for the semiconductor chip industry while Taiwan is also facing a declining student population to draw from after years of low birth rates. Taiwan is also hungry for high-technology, artificial intelligence and other talent.

Universities in Taiwan say they will continue to step up recruitment of overseas students in the coming year in the face of competition for the same pool of international students from other countries in the region such as South Korea, Hong Kong and Japan which have all launched recruitment drives to lure STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) talent, including by improving visa rules.

Taiwan’s Ministry of Education has set a target of recruiting 320,000 international students by 2030 – more than doubling the pre-pandemic high of almost 130,000 in 2018. But crucially, it wants the number who stay on after graduation to exceed 210,000.

At present only 40% of students stay for at least two years after graduating. The government wants to raise this to 70%, under a plan for 2024 to 2028 approved by the cabinet in September last year and backed by TWD$5.2 billion (US$167 million) over the five-year period. The plan includes dual degrees and industry-backed courses which lead to jobs in the industry.

Taipei’s plans include setting up 10 overseas offices in 2024, to provide recruitment services for Taiwan universities. These will also provide preparatory Chinese language courses for students.

Taiwan has joined other countries in Asia in easing its work and entry rules for graduates from foreign universities. In April 2023 it simplified key rules for hiring foreign university graduates and removed the need for two years of work experience to qualify for work visas.

Semiconductor companies in Taiwan have been urging the government to significantly expand student enrolment in electrical engineering. Taiwan is also facing a shortage of graduates willing to continue doctoral studies in the field of semiconductors because many are directly recruited after completing graduate studies.

Government initiatives

The Taiwan government launched a series of recruitment events at universities across South East Asia throughout 2023 which will continue this year, as will a number of innovative schemes to support foreign students and researchers.

Associate Vice-President for International Affairs at National Taiwan University (NTU), Juin-Haw Lee, said his university had been focusing on students from South East Asian countries such as the Philippines, and would step up its initiatives in India as well. It has recruited students mainly from Malaysia, Indonesia and Vietnam.

“Our government approves a lot of resources in this region, so there were several policies of the Ministry of Education including the ‘New Southbound’ policy,” he told University World News, referring to a key plank of current President Tsai Ing-wen since 2016, designed to move away from China and strengthen the island’s relations with the ten countries of the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN), Australia and New Zealand as well as countries in South Asia.

Initiatives have included student scholarships as well as stipends for lecturers from Asian countries.

The latter “is very helpful because it targets lecturers in universities in these countries,” said Lee who is a professor of electrical engineering. “We encourage them to come here to Taiwan for a two-year masters or three-year PhD. After the degree they can go back to their home countries or stay (in Taiwan). Some were promoted to professor (on return) and they could encourage their students to come to Taiwan as well,” he said.

Lee noted that Taiwan is in a unique position to attract foreign students. “For some semiconductor manufacturing techniques, Taiwan is number one in the world, so we want to recruit talent for that. We do not have to copy from other places because we are already number one,” he said.

The government also provided a quota to universities to include foreign researchers in research proposals allocating scholarships to them. “Through this scheme foreign students can come to Taiwan and experience Taiwan within a university, which is a safe place,” noted Lee.

Another programme is the International Internship Pilot Programme (or IIPP) funded by Taiwan’s National Science and Technology Council (NSTC) to provide short term opportunities for foreign researchers of around three months.

In addition, universities in Taiwan have secured some resources from Industry which has helped finance masters scholarships for students. It requires them to stay and work in the industry for a period after they graduate.

“This is good for the students because they are guaranteed not just an internship but a job”, noted Lee. “It is also good for Industry because they can have some manpower to work in the company and companies that are international can send them to other countries as a manager or something like that,” he said.

Industry is also working closely with universities. Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company Limited (TSMC) and MediaTek, an integrated circuit design company, offer certified courses at several Taiwan universities.

When students take these courses at NTU or other universities, they can be prioritised for jobs in those companies on graduation, Lee explained. “When they hire you, they have a better salary and subsidies to encourage students to go through this track,” he said.

Special support for international students

A survey released on 2 January of over 2,000 international students attending a Taiwan education exhibition last year found that 86% of respondents were willing to stay on to work in Taiwan under the government’s schemes offering scholarships, new industry-academia joint programmes and assistance in obtaining residency.

However, Lee pointed out that international students need special support. “For domestic students it’s very easy. Even before they graduate they can go into industry. But at NTU we observed in the office for international affairs the phenomenon that there are some barriers for international students when they want to intern or find a job in semiconductors in Taiwan,” he said.

To assist them, NTU launched an international student mentorship programme for undergraduate, masters and PhD students.

“We tried to find some institutes of liaison, not just in semiconductors, so that during July to September they can intern in the company, and the CEO or CTO (Chief Technical Officer) or manager can instruct our students in English,” he said. The mentoring companies included TSMC.

“We expect this programme to become larger and larger,” Lee said, hoping that it can cover, perhaps, 20-30% of international students at the university.

In November, NTU was also one of almost a dozen Taiwan universities that were part of a 30-strong delegation to India led by Taiwan’s Deputy Minister of Education, with a particular interest in attracting students for its Industry-academia collaboration programme.

During the visit to India Lee said that they found: “Indian students are so brilliant, they have lots of ideas but they don’t have the resources. If we can provide some handouts to them here to go into industry, that would be wonderful. Our (mentoring) programme just launched a few months ago and we hope we can do more in the coming year.”

Asia recruitment tours

The government will also provide Industry internship subsidies in 2024 to boost the number of graduates staying on after completing their degrees.

To attract engineers to Taiwan from other Asian countries, The Ministry of Economic Affairs in Taipei last year (2023) set up the Industrial Development Bureau which put together a South East Asia Semiconductor Recruitment team comprising its main semiconductor companies and Taiwan universities that offer semiconductor programmes to visit top engineering institutions in South East Asia.

It held events in March 2023 at six universities in Singapore and Malaysia, including the National University of Singapore, Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University, Universiti Malaya and Universiti Tunku Abdul Rahman. Additional events were held in June at universities in the Philippines, including Mapua University, University of the Philippines Diliman and the Polytechnic University of the Philippines.

Taiwan’s Minghsin University of Science and Technology, which has a semiconductor school, has already said it will train more than 200 engineers from the Philippines.

In September a delegation of Taiwan universities visited the University of Indonesia and Bandung Institute of Technology and Vietnam’s Ton Duc Thang University and Vietnam National University in Ho Chi Minh City.

Lee acknowledged that part of the problem recruiting from overseas is language. Even his own institution – Taiwan’s most prestigious – does not have enough English-taught courses. At undergraduate level just seven to eight courses are taught purely in English out of 56 departments in the university. At graduate level around a quarter of courses are taught in English.

NTU’s Graduate School of Advanced Technology which Lee describes as “a kind of semiconductor academy” teaches 50% of its courses in English, which he says is enough for masters and PhD students to graduate as they do not need so many taught courses.

For undergraduate courses the Ministry of Education has provided a number of top universities in Taiwan with some funding to increase the number of English-taught courses.

However, there is another hurdle to overcome – the constant threats from Beijing which increased as relations between the United States and China soured, particularly over technology, and became particularly virulent after August 2023 when US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited Taipei.

Beijing launched military exercises around the island, including launching ballistic missiles and cyberattacks. Hostile activity has also risen during the 2023-24 Taiwan election campaign to elect a new president on 13 January. But this has been a pattern over many years to some degree.

“I cannot deny, this is an issue, possibly,” for some international students, said Lee. But he added: “We Taiwanese are used to it. Taiwan wants to protect its environment and we don’t want to change it, so we will do our best to protect ourselves.”

Increased competition for talent

Alongside Taiwan’s own declining population, a new threat to the semiconductor talent pipeline has emerged, making overseas student recruitment more urgent.

Other industries – including artificial intelligence – are competing for the same STEM talent. Additionally, Taiwan’s own students are shunning fab-based Industrial jobs for more comfortable office-based AI and other computing jobs.

Dr Chih-Huang Lai, vice dean of the College of Semiconductor Research under Taiwan's National Tsing Hua University (NTHU) – known for its semiconductor talent courses – was recently quoted in local media as saying that six to seven years ago, around 70% to 80% of new engineering students would major in materials science and plan to join TSMC after graduation.

Nowadays, a conservative estimate sees more than half of them pursuing computer science – a process accelerated by the rise of AI, he observed.

“More and more Taiwanese students are reluctant to enter fabs,” Lai said. Even though TSMC’s R&D engineers are no longer required to enter fabs, the lack of such hands-on semiconductor fabrication experience will ultimately impact production yield and how problems are approached, he added.

Lee acknowledged the rapid growth of AI and its popularity with students. “You are writing code and just need a computer. You can sit in your office very comfortably while having coffee. But with manufacturing, you need to wear the (protective) clothes and the machines are running,” he said.

Nonetheless, Lee stressed the work environment for integrated circuit design in the semiconductor industry is as good as AI. “At NTU we focus on both manufacture and design,” he said.

NSTC Minister Wu Tsung-tsong has said that despite Taiwan's leadership in the global semiconductor industry, it needs to reinforce its IC design sector, one of the main sources for industrial applications and the driving force for the future development of the semiconductor industry.

The government aims to build Taiwan into an international IC design centre by 2035 through inter-ministry cooperation, Wu said.

Students from Germany

Asia is not the only focus for Taiwan. The NSTC plans to set up a semiconductor base in Europe to attract international IC design talent and send them to Taiwan for training.

TSMC is setting up a new semiconductor fab in Dresden, Germany. Under a newly-launched Semiconductor Talent Incubation Programme, TU Dresden (Dresden University of Technology) will send about 30 students to NTU for a semester starting from February 2024, said Lee. Then they will go to TSMC in Taiwan for two months for further training.

“We would like to have more of these kinds of projects in the coming years,” Lee said.