Useless Chinese Degree in Taiwan

To recognize Chinese degrees or not seems a pretty straightforward question for most people. But this issue gets a little bit complicated in Taiwan. Taiwan is one of the very few countries that don’t recognize Chinese degrees and diplomas. So even if Taiwanese citizens received academic degrees or diplomas from universities or colleges in Mainland China, the degrees do not have the same equity as a degree from Taiwan, or most of foreign countries. Course credits taken by Taiwanese students in Mainland China will not able to be transferred to any Taiwanese universities or colleges. To serve in the Taiwanese government system, obtaining an academic degree is normally a basic requirement. With Chinese bachelors or graduate degrees, Taiwanese citizens are not qualified for applying for its government positions. This policy has been executing for many decades due to the tension and conflicts between China and Taiwan.

Even though Chinese degrees and diplomas do not serve the function as a Taiwanese degree in Taiwan, some portion of Taiwanese students still go to Mainland China to seek their degrees. The reason they are willing to seek a Chinese degree is because most of them believe that the Taiwanese government will revise its policy someday or Chinese degrees are recognized by other nations. Besides political concerns, another main reason for keeping the Taiwanese government from recognizing Chinese degrees is its demand and supply in higher education. In the year of 2009, 97% of high school graduates were admitted by universities in Taiwan (Ministry of Education, Taiwan; 2010). Even so, there were 2 Taiwanese universities that only admitted less than 100 freshmen, which was less than the universities would like to recruit. Some universities in Taiwan have already been facing the trouble of student acquisition. The new birth rate in Taiwan has kept decreasing year by year so student acquisition will most likely become a severe problem for university administrators, and student acquisition has already been a problem.

Since Taiwanese Ministry of Education has to deal with closing universities due to low admission rates, the education officers and lawmakers are concerned about the consequence of recognizing Chinese degrees. Since Taiwan and China use the same language, more students most likely will consider obtaining their degrees in China. To revise the policy to recognize Chinese degrees might make the problem of student acquisition even worse.

In the year of 2008, Mr. Ma Ying-jeou was elected as Taiwan's president. The political party President Ma represents is not anti-China like the political parties have been in the past. Ma's administration started to have conversations with the Chinese government. Ma's administration and the Chinese government have already reached the agreement on some low political sensitivity issues. Recently Ma's administration has been negotiating about further economic cooperation agreements (non political issues) with the Chinese government. One of the issues that has been discussed widely by the Taiwanese public would be Chinese labors and Chinese degrees. More lawmakers are advocating to revise the law and to make Chinese degrees legal in Taiwan. The Ministry of Education has drafted the revision of the law and the minister is proposing to recognize academic degrees from Top 40 ranking universities in Mainland China. More hearing will be held by the Taiwanese Congress before the law is changed.

Before the Taiwanese lawmakers pass the law, Chinese degrees seem useless in Taiwan, which doesn't make sense to me at all. I understand that a large population of Taiwanese citizens see China more like a threat than an alien. Not all of the competitions are negative. If the administrators from Taiwanese higher education systems and the Taiwanese lawmakers can assure they can provide quality education that is appealing to Taiwanese students, they should not be afraid to compete with China's higher education system. In this global economy era, the students from Taiwan will not only compete with Chinese students, they will be competing with students from all over the world. I sometimes think that some issues are not just educational issues. The issues could be very complicated. In the above case I just provided, the political atmosphere, economy, diplomacy, etc are all part of the issue.


References:
http://english.moe.gov.tw/lp.asp?ctNode=1184&CtUnit=415&BaseDSD=7&mp=1