Recent coverage by United Daily has brought public attention to the consolidation of higher education institutions, a major issue faced with the country’s higher education sector.

The rapid expansion of the sector has catered to many students with desire for tertiary education over the last 20 years. However, with the country’s falling birth-rate and ageing population, this growth has turned into over-provision of university places and become an area that needs to be addressed urgently. The Education Minister responded that the Ministry would aim to bring down the number of universities from the current 161 to 150 in the next two years.

Some academics have suggested a more vigorous approach to cut the number down to 50, stating that such arrangement helps to keep Taiwan in line with international practice and to increase the resource efficiency.

Other criticism came from experienced education administrators, indicating that over-supply of university places has had a negative impact on universities’ entry threshold, bringing challenges to producing competent graduates.

It was pointed out that incentive scheme needs to be developed urgently to encourage poorly-performing private institutions to close down. As for national universities, suggestions were made to the Ministry of Education to assume a more dynamic funding scheme as enabler to induce diverse and high-quality institutional development. Reports United Daily