Ma to open doors wider to Chinese students

Ma made the remarks yesterday at the opening of the two-day university presidents conference held at the National Taiwan University of Science and Technology in Taipei.

Among other suggestions, the university presidents suggested the government ease the existing restrictive rules to attract more Chinese students to study and earn their degrees at higher learning institutions in Taiwan if President Ma wins re-election next month.

Ma said he advocated many years ago opening doors to students from both China and other areas to promote interchanges and help local students upgrade their international perspectives.

Welcoming more overseas students will also help beef up Taiwan's soft power, he said.

He said that while education is a conscientious and serious profession, it can also help the nation with foreign exchanges and other service industries.

The Ma administration had planned to ease enrolling of Chinese graduate and undergraduate students to local universities by relaxing the rules of the University Act and the Act Governing the Relations between Peoples of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area.

But under the strong opposition from the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), which highlights the harms to Taiwanese students' interests, the Legislative Yuan only eased off the rules with slight changes while stringent restrictions remain.

One of the university presidents said the opening policies should apply to students at more Chinese universities.

Ma said it was still not bad since there are now close to 1,000 mainland students studying for degrees under the new policy.

But he said he will ask the Ministry of Education (MOE) to find ways to enable more interested Chinese students to study in Taiwan under the existing rules.

Encouraging more overseas students to undertake short-term studies and visits is another way to internationalize Taiwan's education services, he said.

Ma said that the gap between the government's funding for general universities and those offering technology and vocational training has been narrowed over the years.

But more efforts should be made by the MOE, he said.

Ma praised the outstanding performance by students from technology and vocational training universities in international design and invention competitions.

Education Minister Wu Ching-chi said the MOE will soon hold meetings with university presidents to jointly find feasible ways to attract more Chinese students to Taiwan.

He pointed out that there is a need for further negotiations as the Chinese side has expressed hope that Taiwan can recognize the academic credentials issued by more Chinese universities to expand the eligible institutions to include all of those on the list of top 100 universities.

Taiwan currently recognizes mainland certificates from only selected universities.

However, the Beijing government has maintained the restriction to allow only students from 41 universities with household registrations in six coastal provinces to study for degrees in Taiwan, he explained.

But overall, it is still not too bad to have 928 Chinese students studying from academic degrees since the relaxed rules only take place for the first year, he said.

Wu said the MOE's policy is moving toward more relaxation in accordance with instruction from President Ma.

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