RED LANTERNS Taiwan promises subsidies to students from private universities to curb the crisis

The announcement of Vice President William Lai, candidate to succeed Tsai ing-wen. As of the second semester of the next academic year, the government will finance part of the tuition fees to stop the decline in enrollment in universities. The opposition talks about an electoral maneuver, but the registration crisis also affects the quality of the offer.

Taipei ( / Agencies) – The crisis of Taiwan’s private universities enters the debate on the campaign for the presidential elections next year. Vice President William Lai – candidate of the ruling party, the Democratic Progressive Party, to succeed President Tsai ing-wen, who is not eligible for re-election – announced a plan to subsidize students in order to cover “at least half ” of the difference between the tuition fees of public and private universities. The gap between tuition fees is currently estimated at about TF$50,000 (€1,460), so the amount to be allocated would be about TF$25,000 per student (€730).

“Although there are already grants for economically disadvantaged students,” said Chu Chun-chang, director general of the Ministry of Education, “many other young people today have to rely on student loans or part-time jobs to pay their expenses, which hurts their education.” The ministry will subsidize students from private universities by directly deducting the money from their total enrollment. The grant is expected to be disbursed from the second semester of the 2023/2024 academic year and 473,000 Taiwanese youth could benefit from it. The estimated total cost is about 15 billion Taiwan dollars (about 440 million euros).

William Lai’s announcement was received coolly by the other two presidential candidates – Kuomintang leader Hou Yu-ih and former Taipei mayor Ko Wen-je, whom polls rank close to two others -, who branded it as an electoral measure. The crisis of its universities is a matter that Taiwan has to face, among other things, due to the effects of demographic decline: in 2021, the total number of students fell below one million.

According to official figures released late last summer, only 11 Taiwan universities had met their new student recruitment targets, while 51 universities – 22 public and 29 private – had not reached their goal of thousands of students despite that the application acceptance rate was 98.94%.

The University Admissions Committee – which expressed concern about these figures – pointed out that even renowned private universities are affected by the drop in enrollment, such as the University of Chinese Culture, which only enrolled 257 students with 2,635 places available.

The crisis is also reflected in the international ranking of universities: in the latest ranking produced by the World University Ranking Center, more than three-quarters of Taiwan’s universities registered a decline in their position, including National Taiwan University – the most renowned-, which dropped six places and stood at 102nd place in the general classification.

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