How RETARDED the government is, thinking that to resolve the problem of lacking professionals is by shortening the winter and summer vacations here! Off of the Front Page Sections, translated…
The president, Tsai attended the N.T.U. “Focus Technology Department” opening ceremonies, made a speech, she’d mentioned, in order to get the professionals trained quickly enough, “can we reduce the lengthiness of the summer and winter vacations, so we can train the best sort of professionals from their individual professional programs, that we can temporarily forget the fact of a summer and winter vacations that exist.”
The president had missed the bulls’ eye by more than a mile, the point here isn’t anywhere NEAR the short or lengthiness of summer and winter breaks, the states that uses the semester system, like Texas, has only a sixteen-week school semester, shorter than Taiwan’s. The quarterly university systems, with only ten-weeks per semester, with three quarters a year, and there are many schools that set up to have five quarters. And so, there are many states in the U.S., with longer summer and winter vacations than that of, Taiwan’s.
And yet, during the summer vacations, the universities of the U.S. would have the courses available in the summer sessions for the students to take, and the students get to fulfill their credits requirement sooner, and graduate sooner. And, even for the students who aren’t full-time students, they’re part-timing, interning. While for the international students, they’re, able to get into the training programs, and, in the summer vacations, they get to hone up on the skills relating to their major of studies, and there are many enterprises across the U.S. that provided the paid internship programs. A lot of students in college would use these internships, and receive the job offers even before they are to graduate from universities.
If the government really cares about the professionalism of Taiwan’s people, DO increase the pay rate of the university professors! The associate professors here makes about $70,000N.T., while the professors makes as high as $120,000N.T. The assistant professor with the doctoral degrees, makes roughly the same amount as elementary school instructors here, this showed, how there’s, the structural unreasonableness of the payrate of professors here in Taiwan.
Although, many of the professors here would have the many sorts of flexible earnings for them, for instance, accepting the programs set by the government, working as the board evaluation members for the government, or reviewing the dissertations, for the extra money made. And yet, as the professors needed to run around to make the money, and needed to stay tuned on the publications of their theses, dissertations, the lectures would definitely, be sacrificed. As the university students can’t get the sense of achievement in their courses, even as they jammed up the courses in the summers and the winters, there’s NO enterprise internships for them, and, this expectancy of having the trained professionals out of universities, becomes but, a delusion.
The payrate for public universities in the U.S. is $120,000U.S. annually, two, three times of what the professors in Taiwan are making. And, the researching professors only has two, three courses to teach per semester, so they can focus on their researches more, and they get to have more time to prepare the teaching materials, as well as leading the grad students in research. The pay rate increased for professors in Taiwan, not only needs the government’s help, the government should also allow the universities, the colleges to adjust the fees they’re charging outside of the tuitions, like the fees for using the buildings of the university campuses, that way, it will attract the Taiwanese professionals to return, or to get the international professionals to come and teach here.
The situations of low pay in Taiwan, is reflected on a lot of the Taiwanese students I met in the U.S., they normally chose NOT to return to Taiwan to work. When the students who’d gone abroad to study, refused to return back here, with what they’d learned, the newest information they received from their education in the west, it’s a loss to Taiwan. And this doesn’t help the upgrade of the Taiwanese enterprises, and a lot of the Taiwanese enterprises can only, keep on, outsourcing the work to foreigners.
Another problem with the universities of Taiwan is that it’d lacked that sense of internationalism, the courses provided in English is especially important, that way, it would, attract the international students to study. If we can advocate the internationalism of the universities here, Taiwan has the advantage of low cost in tuition, and surely, the country can then, attract more international students to come and learn the professional skillsets.
And so, the longer summer breaks, can actually offer a chance for the college students to graduate earlier, to get involved in internship programs; increasing the payrates of the professors, not only would this help the professors, focus on teaching, and research, it can also, attract the foreign professionals to return; increasing the internationalism of the universities, attracting the international students, that, is the best medicine for helping Taiwan to have better trained, professionals, not shortening the summer and the winter vacations.
And so, this, is a comparison of the education systems in the western world, versus here, and, the government’s plans of shortening the winter and summer vacations because they want the students here to get more training time into their, separate career paths is, fixing the symptoms, not the illness, and it will, backfire!
Life, the Obstacle Course 