| Summary: | 碩士 === 國立台北師範學院 === 國民教育研究所 === 91 === A study of the Integration and
Merging Policies of National Universities
and Colleges in Taiwan
Abstract
by
Kuei-Chih Huang
During recent years, because our country’s higher education domain has been expanded rapidly, the funds burden of our state higher education has aggravated. With limited educational resources, we have had too many financial difficulties to cope with, so the funds squeezing effects emerged. In view of this, Ministry of Education issued “the plan of promoting the research-type universities to integrate” on January 25, 2001, the key points of promotion include: 1. Integration inside the universities. 2. Integration between universities, including: (1) Establishing research center across universities; (2) Composing the university system; (3) Merging. Ministry of Education hopes to integrate the resources of various regions and areas of the national universities and colleges to coordinate with the general development plan of universities. It advises all the universities and colleges to take “integration and merging” as their considered tactics in the general integration of resources, encourages the universities to participate in international evaluation and identification activities, improve their international competitive power and cultivate the international research-type universities. Therefore, this study aims at the related issues of university integration and merging policies, probes into the suggestions of domestic experts and scholars on this policy to make a contribution to the analysis and research of related educational administrative departments on the integration and merging policies of national universities.
Therefore, this study is based on both the interviews and analysis of experts and the questionnaire investigation. Totally, 230 questionnaires were sent out, and 183 were actually recovered, and by deducting the questionnaires with incomplete data, totally 170 were effective specimens, the rate of recovery was 73.91%. The result: 135 interviewees (80%) all believed that the national universities and colleges should carry out the policy of integration and merging. 88 interviewees agreed that the universities and colleges whose student number was below 3,000 did not accord with the economic scale and effects standard of higher education, they’d better carry out the policy of integration and merging. Moreover, this study has found, the intentions of most interviewees to promote the integration and merging of universities are mainly to conform to the policies of Ministry of Education to promote the integration and merging of universities, improve the academic status of universities and get more resources, and also because of the inadequate funds of higher education, the needs of adapting to the times tide, the pressure of universities to raise funds by themselves, and reorganization or organization simplification. While, the greatest resistances of the universities to integrate and merge mainly lie in the misgivings of reducing staffs, the feelings of losing oneself by renaming the universities, and the opposition of alumna and teachers.
Also, by thorough inquiry, this study discovers: the primitive idea of both domestic and foreign universities of integration and merging was to provide better educational resources for students. Merely, in the tide of integrating and merging universities in Taiwan, there is still an important issue to be solved, that is, Ministry of Education has unconsciously initiated all the universities and colleges to take pursuing “research-type universities” as their ultimate aim, because, even when the universities are divided into four main types---research, teaching, profession and community, Ministry of Education will still take “strengthening subsidizing the research-type universities” as their most important task. While, according to the facts, we know from the integration and merging experiences of all advanced countries: “a research-type university is not equal to an outstanding university, while becoming a research-type university is one of the basic conditions to become an outstanding university.” We advise the related departments of Ministry of Education to put forward the auxiliary measures for all the universities and colleges to integrate and merge in order to avoid the unexpectedly raised obstructions and the difficult implementation of policies, and so the students’ right of receiving education and the educational quality will not be influenced virtually. Basing on the discovery and conclusions of this study, we provide the following plan for the related educational departments to carry out the integration and merging of universities and colleges for reference and consideration:
1. The implementation of the plan of integrating and merging national universities and colleges should take the social equality and justice into consideration.
2. Education is a project of vital and lasting importance, the shortening of higher educational funds should not be the main excuse of integrating and merging national universities and colleges.
3. The excessive competition of higher education resulted by the integration and merging of national universities and colleges will possibly lead to the complete competitiveness of higher education market.
4. The reform of our country’s higher educational structure cannot be implemented by invariably referring to the experiences of foreign countries to integrate and merge universities.
5. Eliminate the people’s blind faith in famous star universities, improve the educational level of all people and achieve the competitive power of the state.
At last, this study finds by deep inquiry: at the beginning, in the process and in the future of integrating and merging the universities and colleges of Taiwan, there is a deep-rooted idea to be changed, that is the blind faith in “famous star universities” of the people, which is put forward in the conclusion, this is also one of the potential factors that the integration and merging will not be easy to succeed. We should know, in the world of globalization in the future, a diploma is not an irreplaceable right symbol any longer, so the study suggests Ministry of Education mainly divide the universities and colleges into research-type universities, professional universities, teaching-type universities, community-type universities, enterprise-type universities and Internet universities after integrating and merging them, and coordinate with the “diamond transferring system of elective courses” put forward by this study to effectively apply the best resources of all universities repeatedly, and not replace “unique character” with “unitary character” again. We hope the universities and colleges of all types to strengthen their ability of raising funds by themselves with their own characters, actually solve the awkward situation of inadequate educational funds and form the universities’ own advantages to absorb more resources to join in the interactive teams and create the universities’ future of everlasting operation.
Key words:
Universities and colleges Integration and merging
Operation of universities Operation scale
Reorganization Tactic alliance
World Trade Organization
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