The Current Educational System in Taiwan

Global trends in educational reforms and societal changes have affected Taiwan's educational policies. Education is strongly emphasized in Taiwan, especially universal education, for it is vital for a modern society. In the past few decades, the educational system in Taiwan has gone through different phases of development. As a result, educational reform has become a top priority, and its measures have been adopted by the government to solve problems in different areas of the educational system. However, I would like to focus on one serious question which may not be clearly shown now: has the expansion of higher education eased the equity concern for students with disadvantaged backgrounds in Taiwan?

This concern arises because equal educational opportunity is a principal foundation for a democratic and free society in which individuals, regardless of their backgrounds, can fully develop their potential. Without such equal opportunities, unjust social classes will prevail, society is likely to be unstable, and the economy may stagnate. Over the past twenty years, the expansion of the higher education system in Taiwan has been impressive. It has certainly helped to increase educational opportunities for students, particularly those with disadvantaged backgrounds who had been the most likely to be excluded from colleges and universities. However, despite this great achievement, one may still be concerned about whether all students can attain an education of similar quality.

Based on credible data collected from national samples, it was found that while overall access to college education had been greatly improved for students with disadvantaged backgrounds, there were still equity problems in attaining education in universities of higher quality or desirability for those students. The current college education system does not seem to be effective in helping students with disadvantaged backgrounds to move up socially and economically. Therefore, the current education system in Taiwan needs to give the disadvantage students a chance to play a critical role in improving or maintaining a nation’s competitiveness in the modern knowledge-based world economy.

In brief, higher education is important to individuals. Individuals with a higher education degree will generally have greater work-time earnings than their counterparts without a higher education degree. Consequently, in effectively removing barriers for all disadvantage students to attend an institution of higher education, the current educational system in Taiwan has to be equally effective in enabling those disadvantage students to acquire the same quality of education.