In today’s episode of Looking South, Eric Gau sits down with Department of International and Cross-strait Education Director-general Andy Bi to talk about how the Ministry of Education is fostering ties with Southeast Asian partner countries.
Listen here.
Transcript below:
Eric Gau: Good morning! I’m Eric Gau, and this is Looking South on ICRT, our weekly program looking at the effects of the central government’s New Southbound Policy. For the next several episodes, we’ll be examining how it is impacting educational exchanges between Taiwan and the target countries. To tell us about that, we are joined today by Department of International and Cross-strait Education Director-general Andy Bi. Director-General Bi, good morning, and welcome to the program.
Andi Bi: Yes, good morning, hello everyone.
Eric: Director Bi, to start us off, what is the Ministry of Education’s role in the New Southbound Policy?
Bi: As everyone knows, there are two main ends of the New Southbound Policy: facilitating connections between people and developing talent in the ASEAN and South Asian countries through academic and job training programs at Taiwanese colleges and universities. But its key to success is built on the foundation of the cultivation of talent, of people, to deepen bilateral ties and enhance cultural exchange among students, academics, and industrial professionals. So the Ministry of Education has established the New Southbound Talent Development Program in conjunction with the New Southbound Policy, targeting the South Asian and Southeast Asian countries, plus Australia and New Zealand. We want to implement this program, so we are going to have three approaches: market, timeline, and platform. Market refers to promoting and expanding our high education market overseas. Timeline refers to interflow, two-way of outstanding people between Taiwan and our partner countries. On one hand it’s to attract more students to come to Taiwan for degree programs or non-degree programs. On the other hand, we will send our students abroad to gain a deeper understanding of the other country, culture, language, and engage with the foreign community. Last but not least, platform refers to establishing and expanding a platform for bilateral educational cooperation based on social and cultural links.
Eric: Could you tell us more about the New Southbound program you were talking about, and how it’s going to help cultivate talent?
Bi: Within the Ministry of Education, we have a New Southbound Policy task force, it’s comprised of cross-department and agencies. We’ve initiated over 20 scholarships and grant programs, but we just highlight a few important ones. We offer scholarships, including degree programs we call Taiwan Scholarship. We have a Chinese language program we call the Huayu Enrichment Scholarship. We also offer the Elite Scholarship. It is exclusive for our partner country lecturers, to pursue master’s degree or PHD degree. We also have the so-called International Program. This is a customized training program to meet the needs for education and professional training of our partner countries. Everyone knows there is industrial-academia cooperation program we call IACP. We also have a non-degree program. It is a short-term program for professional training. We also have a holiday school, it is for summer, winter, so student groups can come to Taiwan for short-term study. We also have an internship for international students, a Taiwan Experience Education Program. Through those programs, we can offer international students to have a chance to experience Taiwan’s high quality higher education and to connect to the Asia job market. This is all about inbound. It recruits foreign students to come to Taiwan. We also have an outbound approach. We will send our students to our partner countries for internships or pursue some degrees.
Eric: How many students have you helped through these various programs that you’ve mentioned?
Bi: The Taiwan government subsidizes technical vocational college and universities to offer the international industrial academia cooperation program, and also has some other short-term programs. Through these programs for the 2018 academic year, over 4000 students from our partner countries are undertaking one of the 111 IACP degree programs in Taiwan. And also over 40 students in the short-term programs for technical training for foreign youth, and 87 students undertook one of the three in the short term program to enhance professional skill for foreign youth. Also, I have to highlight that we have a program endorsed by the Indonesian government. So we have the G-to-G cooperation. The first batch we have 88 students to join our program, called 2 Plus I. this means come to Taiwan for two years to study, plus the I means internship. We’re also subsidizing the college and universities to offer programs under the elite intensive program, the elite research development degree program, and holiday school and short-term school. To sum up, there are more than 124 holiday classroom to attract the 3100 attendees. And 150 programs have been approved under the TEEP. By 2019, there will have been more than 1,200 students to join this program. The Ministry of Education will continue to offer those students after graduation or during graduation more opportunities for internships or post-graduation employment opportunities.
Eric: What about students from here in Taiwan who are interested in cultivating their skills and maybe going to Southeast Asian countries?
Bi: According to Gold Car foundation, they have a survey. Because of the benefits by the New Southbound Policy, we have a grant to encourage our universities and colleges to send their students for internships in those New Southbound Policy partner countries. Since two years ago, we already have 3800 students taken for internships in those countries. We are targeting that every year there will be 15 percent increase, and we will continue to set up the key performance index. So this year, it will certainly reach 5000, and continue next year to reach 7500 students to go to New Southbound countries.
Eric: Looking ahead, what other projects or programs is the MOE planning to further these cultivation programs and exchanges under the New Southbound Policy?
Bi: Through the almost three years, we learned a lot. We will tune up some programs. For example, we mentioned the industrial-academia cooperation program. Earlier, we just targeted the young students or the two year college students. But now we will enter the next stage, the 2.0. We will continue tailoring, selecting outstanding three year college students to study in Taiwan, offer more incentives for tuition-free waivers. Another program is, earlier I mentioned is we have one of our approach is platform. So in those partner countries we have the Taiwan connection project. We have Taiwan education center. We set up the research center for economic, industrial, academic cooperation. So now we have a new approach. We want to integrate those three centers to be synergy. So all the resources can play a more crucial role to build up more close ties with the government, universities and colleges, or the research centers, to make a better way to expand our capacity through all the different programs.
Eric: We’ve been talking with Director-general Andy Bi from the Department of International and Cross-strait Education about educational programs under the New Southbound Policy. Director-general Bi, thank you for enlightening us this morning.
Bi: It’s my pleasure. Thank you very much for inviting me to join your show.
Eric: That wraps up today’s installment of Looking South. Join us again next week as I chat with a language student studying the tongues of the region. Catch it here at the same time next Monday, or visit the podcast section of the ICRT Website for all past episodes. I’m Eric Gau, and I’ll see you again next week.