Doctoral Studies at National Taiwan Normal University – The First Semester

I haven’t posted for a while. Last June, I announced that I would be starting a Ph.D. at National Taiwan Normal University and I’ve been very busy with that and with a book I’m putting out later this year. I have now finished the first semester. This post is about my experience and some comments for those thinking about doing something similar.

The program is great. In what I am doing, it’s the best program I could imagine. A number of my friends tried to talk me out of doing a doctorate in Taiwan and convince me that studying in the United States or Canada would be better. I considered this seriously and visited several schools to meet faculty and talk with graduate students. I have no regrets about my choice.

The Program

I am registered in the Department of Educational Psychology and Counseling. Educational Psychology is a very old department and dates back to the origins of the school when the KMT came to Taiwan. In the past, during martial law, my department was deeply involved with the administration of schools in Taiwan. One might consider it a bastion of Blue politics. This would be hard to tell now, however, the strong connection with public education remains. Many of my classmates are teachers and counselors in public and private schools.

In addition, in my department all first-year graduate students take a course which for lack of a better translation I call the ‘military education class’. In all likelihood, it used to be the class run by the school’s military officers back when there was martial law. Another foreign student in our department from the Czech Republic agrees with me that it seems to be a military education class. Although she said in Czechoslovakia, they got to shoot guns and wear gas masks. In our class, we have to meet 2 hours every week and hear talks from faculty about their lives, research, and what they think about life. I am told that other departments in the Faculty of Education have a similar course, although I know that academic departments in other parts of the school have a different and less rigourous way of handling the requirement.

The largest part of the department is Counseling Psychology. There are over 50 master’s students and some number of doctoral candidates. The reason for this is a mystery to me. Apparently, there exists some connection in Taiwan between the study of counseling and working in Human Resources. I spoke with one of my classmates about this and she explained that Counseling Psychology is viewed as a profession. Like an MBA, it attracts students who don’t really know what they want to do, but don’t want to get a job yet.

I am in the Educational Psychology program. This is divided into 3 sections; cognitive psychology, social psychology, and measurement. I am in measurement. Much of the work in this section is related to testing and formal evaluation. In fact, the leading test designers in Taiwan all teach here. This includes my advisor, Dr. Lin Sieh-Hwa, who is the chief designer of the Basic Competency Test used to regulate entrance into senior high school. This year most of my courses are related to measurement and statistics, including IRT, multivariate statistics, categorical methods and structural equation modeling.

Without exception, these are the best taught classes in methods that I have ever had. In fact, when I was a student in Canada, I took many classes in statistics and measurement at both the graduate and undergraduate levels. My classes at NTNU are easily the best. I don’t know whether this is because I’m older and more motivated or better positioned. I tend to think the real reason is that the professors are extremely well informed and organized. Often, methods classes like these are taught by professors who are not experts and do not directly do research in methods but are involved in research with a heavy reliance on methodology. Either that, or they are experts but are completely blind to the fact that others aren’t leading researchers in their field. Perhaps because it’s a department that trains educators, none of this is true for the professors I’m studying with. I can honestly say that I’ve learned more about measurement and statistics this term than from all the other classes I’ve taken in the area combined.

Another issue that frequently comes up in personal conversation is supervision. I have been told by Taiwanese and foreign graduate students about terrible problems they have had getting in touch with their supervisors. To be fair, this is a major problem for people I know studying in the USA and Europe, as well. One of my colleagues who is doing a PhD in the USA can not get  any cooperation from his supervisor. A PhD student at leading American university I visited last year told me that his advisor, whose name would be familiar to many readers, was “…not much use if you need him to read papers and give advice. Last year, he was in (a foreign county) and you couldn’t reach him at all for the whole year.”

I have had no problem with this at NTNU, nor has anyone in my department. I see my supervisor regularly. I could probably talk to him every day if I needed. The professors who teach my classes are all easy to find. In fact, they always seem to be at school. If I have a problem, I just drop by their office. I understand this is not always the case in Taiwan. Nevertheless, I have been very fortunate.

The Credibility of a Taiwan Degree

 One of the questions that comes up most often in the discussion of education in Taiwan is credibility of degrees. There appears to be an impression that degrees from Taiwan lack credibility outside any but the poorest economies. Apparently I have been interpreted as having said this. This is not correct. Degrees from Taiwan should be fine - if other conditions are also met.

Graduate degrees are like any other kind of professional education. If they aren’t plugged into the network, you’re going to have trouble. If you graduate from a program here and then move to another country to work, you will almost certainly not know any one who is does the hiring. Your advisors will probably not know anyone and things like letters of reference from them won’t mean very much. In addition, the networks of colleagues you made in class will vanish. It won’t matter how hard-working or ingenious you were in class, no one will know. I have seen the same kind of thing happen with Taiwanese returning from overseas education. Once they’re out of the network of their advisor, it doesn’t matter how good their work was at grad school.

There is a way to handle this. If you have a significant amount of published research, this will speak for itself. Increasingly though, the market is such that even this will only get you noticed and not guarantee employment. Most full-time faculty appointments in North America now start with significant publication records.

One Final Warning

Unless you’ve been in hibernation for the last year, you’re sure to know there’s a world-wide economic disaster. One of the effects of this has been to hammer university employment. Faculty at many universities are now accepting pay cuts to handle institutional crises. This includes schools like the University of North Carolina, the University of California system, the University of Hawaii, and these are just the cases I know about.

My point is that with massive cuts being absorbed by existing faculty, it’s not likely there will be much hiring going on. There is no foreseeable end to this problem and it’s possible that the solution will be a system that does not look at all like the ones we graduated from. It’s not unimaginable that Humanities and Fine Arts will simply no longer exist (1, 2). The images of the university like those modeled here do not feel so far away anymore. In a market like this, an application from someone you don’t know, that no one in the department knows, from a school no one understands, is not likely to get much attention unless it’s supported by a significant research record.

So What?

I think a PhD at a Taiwan university can be a great opportunity for some people. It can be a big waste of life, as well. The decision to do this has to be well thought out and well researched to make it a good experience.

In my previous post, I laid out some of the questions you should address before you think about enrolling in a program. With the current academic job market, I would add one more. You have to know what you want to do with the degree. It’s not realistic to believe that without significant academic experience you’ll be able to move very far. On the other hand, as much as movement is possible in the new reality, a strong research record is essential. There are fewer and fewer good jobs available in academia and what will get you noticed is correspondingly greater. But a doctorate from a Taiwan university will not put you outside the game if you can meet other standards.

Also see this post.

Taiwan in Japan’s Empire Building: An Institutional Approach to Colonial Engineering by Hui-yu Caroline Ts’ai

Ts’ai Caroline Hui-Yu. 2009 Taiwan in Japan’s empire-building : an institutional approach to colonial engineering. Routledge, New York.

Caroline Tsai (蔡慧玉) is a research fellow of the Institute of Taiwan History(臺灣史研究) at the Academia Sinica, Taipei (中央研究院). She is perhaps the foremost historian of Taiwan’s colonial period and one of the most prolific researchers, publishing research in Mandarin, English, and Japanese. The volume itself is published through Routledge in cooperation with the Academia Sinica Book Series on East Asia. Understandably, a lot should be expected from such a publication, and there is no disappointment. The book is an absolute necessity for researchers interested in Taiwan’s early modern period, and will undoubtedly remain so for many years to come.

While the book describes itself as “comprehensive but not exhaustive,” it is very thorough in its description of colonial Taiwan. It deals in great detail with the institutional structure of life during this period providing clear understanding of the organizations that made Taiwan a colony. No less important is the book’s role in describing Taiwan’s introduction to the modern world or

…how in practice the colonial government introduced the ideas of ‘enlightenment’ and of ‘modernity’ into local society (p. 8).

The goal of this post is not to review the entire volume. Instead, I want to focus on the place of the book in addressing a number of issues that have appeared as important in my blog. In particular, I want to address the nature of imperialism and colonization, examination in Taiwan and Asia, and the Household Registry.

Imperialism and Colonialism

There is perhaps no other topic on my blog that has created as much ‘friction’ as has use of the term “imperialism”. In part, this is because of its usage in the academic disciplines of Education and language teaching, as well as other departments in universities. I maintain that imperial is the adjective of empire and thus only used correctly in this context.

Apparently, it is also used to describe the continued influence of the USA and Europe in formerly colonial states: ie, in post-colonial states. The usage of the term, in this sense, seems to imply an almost monolithic, unidirectional relationship between the colonizer and the colonized. Colonizers tell the colonized what to do through law, policy, and other forms of hegemonic coercion. The description of colonial Taiwan depicted by Tsai is explicitly different from this.

Taiwan was a reasonably well-developed part of the Chinese Empire when it was cede to the Japanese by the Treaty of Shimonoseki (J: 下関条約, Ch: 馬關條約). In addition, there was a long and independent history to the island that Japanese governance was forced to deal with. The formal colonial bureaucracy of Taiwan was never large enough to completely govern Taiwan by itself. Real control was always maintained through a largely informal mechanism of “extra-bureaucratic control” (p. 65). Positions such as heads of headships and villages had no formal legal standing until after 1935 and operated as honorary titles. Official government operated by creating

…employment outside of the regulating law (in ‘gai nin ‘yo 員外任用)…turning the civil bureaucracy into a disciplinary institution for effective administration and social control, as opposed to repression or suppression (p. 66).

The significance of this is that the colonized played a major contribution to the nature of their own colonization through the operating as functionaries and officials in this system. They designed and constructed many of the activities that were what we now think of as colonialism and hence imperial. Colonialism in Taiwan was thus a two-way street of control, albeit streets of unequal importance.

Another surprisingly important feedback of colonialism is the way in which it shaped the modern Japanese state. As Dr. Tsai points out (p. 15),

As Japan’s first colony, Taiwan played a key role in redefining Japan’s prewar constitution….Essentially, to make colonial administration from scratch.

The modernization of Japan began only slightly prior to its emergence as a major colonial power. Development of its constitution and legal code continued throughout this period. Much of what became incorporated into these institutions was designed specifically with this in mind. Japan’s conception of legal control was thus shaped by its experience as a colonizer.

Examination

As Dr. Tsai points out (p. 52),

No explicit criteria for recruitment and advancement through examination existed in modern Japan prior to 1885.

Japanese historians of this period have noted that examination was introduced by American foreign experts. Regardless of their origin, as Dr. Tsai points out, within a short period of time, the Japanese had established an extensive network of public service examinations throughout their empire, including Taiwan. Nevertheless, it was impossible to govern Taiwan without the use of alternative roots to professional achievement. This was particularly true for the police. So many police were needed that many Taiwanese were recruited to fill these positions. While police examinations were extensive, there were alternative roots to promotion that Dr. Tsai discusses. As she pointed out in her presentation at the 2008 conference of the European Association of Taiwan Studies, most local police officials were promoted without the use of examinations.

The significance of this is that in spite of long use of examinations in Imperial China, examination in schools and professional licensing was introduced by the Japanese. By the time the Japanese had established entrance examinations to their own imperial universities and even a colonial examination system for police, there was not a single state university in China and it was not until Sun Yat-sen wrote his Fundamentals of National Reconstruction that the idea of an Examination Yuan was suggested.

While not a point that Dr. Tsai develops, her research helps clarify one of the more problematic issues in the modern history of examinations. The Asian model for the use of examination in the university and as a way to select modern workers comes from Japan and not China.

Household Registry

The Republic of China practices household registry. While many other states have also used a household registration system, the ones used in Japan, South Korea, and the ROC are strikingly similar.

Continuing with research she did for her doctorate at Columbia University, this book establishes Dr. Tsai as one of the foremost historians of the Japanese colonial reregistration system or the hoko (保甲 Ch: baojia). Household registry and the hoko had their origins as a system of criminal discipline. This very quickly disappeared and was replaced with its use as a system for organizing social activity. Hoko and the organizations that developed around it were involved in the vast number of social and health reforms implemented by the Japanese. Later during the Pacific War, it was used as the organizing principle around which labour, conscription, and mobilization occurred.

Dr. Tsai details the ways in which the Japanese established the registry system and used it to organization Taiwan society during their colonial control. The hoko became so dominant during the Occupation that it can be thought of as the defining principle of organization around which a Taiwanese modernity was created.

Final Thoughts

Dr. Tsai’s book was extremely useful for me to read. While I am quite knowedgable about Japan’s colonial occupation of Taiwan, it straightened me out on a number of points I have always believed – but are wrong. for example, I have always believed that many reforms credited to the Japanese actually followed trends set in Republican China under KMT control. In particular, I have always credited the KMT with the eradication of traditional Chinese practices such as opium smoking, foot-binding and the queue.

Apparently I have been mistaken. In Taiwan, all of these practices were eradicated directly by the Japanese. In fact, Dr. Tsai describes in great detail the way the Japanese used the hoko to orchestrate these reforms, even discussing the emergence of hats as men’s fashion following Japanese enforcement of the ban on the queue.

One significant point about Dr. Tsai’s book is its extensive system of citation. In terms of language, the book is one of the most complex and complete works available. despite this, the manner in which it incorporates Japanese and Chinese script, pinyin, and English is both comprehensive and informative. Readers will never feel left confused by terms. I believe it is so thorough with respect to this issue, it can and should be used as model for research on this period.

Readers interested in the hoko and colonial Taiwan can find Dr. Tsai’s chapter on hoko road building in my forthcoming book (with Ann Heylen) Understanding Taiwan: From Colonialism to Democracy.

Doctoral Studies at National Taiwan Normal University (國立臺灣師範大學)

This fall, I will be entering the doctoral program in Educational Psychology at National Taiwan Normal University (NTNU 國立臺灣師範大學). This program is a Chinese-taught program and all the other students in the program have been educated in Taiwan. The program has two areas of specialization: counseling and testing, and I will be studying educational testing.

I am frequently asked about doctoral studies in Taiwan. I have never written anyone back about this because it is far too complex an issue to get into in e-mail. This post is aimed at answering questions about studying in Taiwan from citizens of advanced industrial nations, such as the USA or Canada, who are contemplating graduate studies in a Chinese-taught program.

Frankly…

Frankly, I do not think graduate studies in a regular Chinese-taught program is a good choice for most people educated only in advanced industrial nations. Language is not really the issue. In fact, my Chinese is not really strong enough to do this program without special consideration from the department. I will be able to complete the degree only because many of the professors speak English and almost all the readings are in English. Despite being a top national school, none of the Taiwanese students in the program speak English well enough to make a difference.

The major problems that Anglo-Americans will face in these programs is related to style. Education in Taiwan has evolved under different historical and cultural forces than in the West. As such, learning in the class is structured very differently. Perhaps the best way to explain this is with an example.

The Strange Case of William Terry Alred

A while back, there was some commotion concerning the application to a Taiwan university by William Alred. Mr. Alred, an American, registered in a doctoral program at National Chung Cheng University. He ran into all kinds of problems that eventually found their way into the local English-language world. This is the original China Post article on the incident, the forumosa.com discussion and my own post that followed. Mr. Alred’s problems with the school have even found their way onto the school’s Wikipedia entry.

Briefly, Mr. Alred applied to the Department of Political Science where he made no secret that his Chinese proficiency was very poor. When the department accepted him, he found that none of the faculty would cooperate with him in deciphering the material explained in class. Eventually, he dropped out of the program.

In fact, the details of Mr. Alred’s problems with the department are quite disturbing. All of this seems to me to have been easily avoided. His demand for supplementary instruction in English lead to a number of confrontations with local faculty members.  Regardless of who is at fault, it seems to me that the program was perfectly manageable for him and that while he presumed language to be the most significant barrier, it is not the serious concern for most Western citizens.

The China Post article cites Ministry of Education figures that “3,935 hopefuls have officially enrolled in bachelor, master or Ph.D. programs.” Many of these people would be enrolled in the special English-taught programs, like the ones offered by my school’s International College. Some would also be overseas Chinese, like one of my classmates next year, who is a Malaysian citizen raised in Taiwan. A further group would be like the Chinese-fluent international students accepted into the Graduate Institute of Taiwan Culture,Languages & Literature where Dr. Ann Heylen teaches. Despite this, my guess is that the majority of international students at Taiwan universities are deficient in Chinese-language proficiency. I expect the program I will enter is pretty much the same as the one Mr. Alred was involved with.

And one final point. The vast majority of international students in Taiwan are not passport holders of advanced industrial nations. This article from the MOE’s own website states that of the 17, 500 foreign students in Taiwan, 9135 are studying in a university language center. Of the remainder more than 2000 are exchange students and finally,

…foreign students in Taiwan come from 117 countries and the top five nations are Vietnam (806), Malaysia (700), Indonesia (425), Japan (409), and the USA (348).

That is, most of them come from economically underdeveloped nations.

Why My Situation is Different

My situation is very different from Mr. Alred’s. I selected the program at NTNU because I had researched it completely, was sure it would be a great program, and am certain I can finish it. To begin with, I have a great deal of knowledge about this department. A colleague of mine was the first non-Chinese fluent Ph.D. candidate ever accepted into the program. I have meet his supervisor socially and talked with him about the program. More significantly, I audited the class on Modern Mental Testing (現代心理測試) that he offered last term and am currently auditing the class Applied Electronic Calculation (電子計算機之應用). Both of these courses are compulsory in the doctoral program I will enter and I will have to take them again for credit in the upcoming 2 years.

I know exactly what is going to happen to me in this program. In fact, I can go so far as to say I picked this program because I am sure it will not be a waste of time for me. I have a third colleague enrolled in a Chinese-taught Ph.D. program at another school. He has absolutely no Chinese-language proficiency at all. This is not important to him and he is much more concerned with the certification his program will give him. I could also have enrolled in this and other programs, but I did not feel it would give me the same results.

The material in the course is directly related to my job. I am heavily involved in the evaluation of student English proficiency at Ming Chuan University. The department at NTNU is one of the key players in the construction of the ROC Basic Competency Test used to place students in senior high schools. That’s why these tests are on the NTNU website.

While I said that language proficiency is not a barrier to completion of the program, this does not mean it is not an issue. In class, it is very difficult for me to follow what’s going on. The Taiwanese students are only marginally helpful because their English is not really good enough. The class I mentioned above called Modern Mental Testing concerns a family of statistics used in test construction called Item Response Theory (IRT). The class readings were all in English. I found the professor to be very approachable outside of class, but I think this is partly because I work in a large high stakes testing program, and as a result, have a lot of professional experience and meaningful opinions to offer. In addition, I read widely outside the course material. Our conversations were rarely related directly to course materials.

During the class, I did an oral presentation, which was a compulsory requirement for the registered students. I spoke in English and prepared handouts and a reading that were all written in English. My presentation was drawn from authentic material used in my school’s testing program and was a discussion of questions we actually placed on an examination and analyzed with IRT. It was very successful.

The Lessons of My Application

There are a few basic points I think every person from one of those first world-type countries should be thinking about if they have an interest in graduate studies at a Taiwan university.

1. Why do you want to do this?

Is it because you are an English teacher in a buxiban and feel trapped in a meaningless world filled with small children who barely speak English? A Chinese-taught program will almost certainly not help you. The China Post article on Mr. Alred stated that he had planed to teach at the university-level in the United States. As I have mentioned before, this is not an altogether realistic goal anymore – if it ever was. I think it’s naive that Mr. Alred could think a PhD from a Taiwan school would allow him to teach at a Western school. There are many Taiwanese teaching in other countries. Virtually all of them have advanced degrees from schools in these countries. In fact, very few people are teaching at Western universities that do not have advanced degrees from Western schools. Those educated completely outside the West are generally internationally renowned scholars with extensive research expertise in their field.

2. How much do you really know about the subject?

One of the very strange things I consistently hear from people suggesting graduate studies in Taiwan concerns their proposed field of study. These are graduate degrees we’re talking about. You’re supposed to have advanced knowledge of the field before you enter. Certainly the local students all do. In fact, they have passed through extremely competitive evaluations to ensure this. And while some departments - as in Mr. Alred’s case – will let you in with no background at all, what do you think you’ll get out of the degree? After all, there’s already a language barrier. If you don’t have the background to make sense of what’s going on, what could you possibly get out of the education?

Graduate degrees are supposed to make people experts. With no background in a subject and limited Mandarin, what is this thing you’re supposed to become an expert in at a Taiwan university? I have been asked by people about degrees they have no background in whatsoever. I have had marginally Mandarin-proficient people suggest to me research topics that would demand complete fluency in several Chinese languages, on top of English.

This is a very serious point. If you don’t know anything about the subject, what makes you think you could become an expert - in a Chinese-language program?

3. How much do you know about the program?

There are many programs in Taiwan that are outstanding. There are many that are not. Are you sure the program is going to give you anything that you want or need?

Taiwanese schools are extremely strong in quantitative methods. I suppose this has to do with an historical emphasis on science and technology. Many of the professors today would have been educated in a much more competitive system. Students who wanted to enter an Engineering or Mathematics department would have found it very difficult. Likewise, students who insisted on entering a top university might not have been able to enter the Science department they wanted. I imagine many such students ended up in departments like Psychology or Education. As a result, there are excellent people to study quantitative methods with in these departments.

The converse is also true. Theoretical subjects have historically found leadership in European languages. The language gap has not always been successfully crossed. In addition, for most of Taiwan’s modern history there has been huge control over freedom of speech. Many of the topics that would facilitate the development of theoretical competency in Social Sciences have been illegal to discuss and punished with prison or death. The result has been that Taiwan universities do not provide a strong venue for studies in theoretical subjects.

4. Are you sure you can handle the difference in learning style?

From my point of view, perhaps the biggest problem that Mr. Alred had at Chung Cheng University was one of learning style. Taiwanese students and teachers work in a system where classroom activity has historically played a background role in preparation for the major decision making that takes place during examination. The idea that he Mr. Alred would not get a lot out what’s happening in class might not necessarily be seen as a problem.

Class here lacks the feeling of desperation I remember it having in Canada. It is not a forum to show off how clever you are or how much reading you did outside class. It is not at all unusual to see students in class during a lecture with their lap tops flipped open, as if they were taking notes, doing homework for other classes, playing games, or working on other unrelated material.

Student presentations are a large part of class work in Taiwan. Most of what happens during these presentations involves detailed review of assigned readings. It is not unusual to see students with Power Points that contain the English text of readings and then a Chinese translation. They will then explain their understanding of the English text, sometimes line by line. This may seem redundant, but I have seen similar situations in Canada. More important is the fact that much of reading is in a foreign language (English) of which students may not have a strong grasp. Student presentations are often taken as an opportunity to make sure the assigned readings were properly understood.

As I pointed out above, the presentation I did was not a translation or explanation of the text. But I work in testing and have real data to draw from. I was able to bring to the class examples of the material we had studied and how it worked in real life. It would be unreasonable to expect 25 year olds who have never worked in their field to be able to do this. As a result, they translate the texts and make sure they know what was really said.

…and

I just want to conclude that problems like the kind experienced by Mr. Alred are perfectly avoidable. It takes careful planning and patience, but if you expect to get as much out your PhD as you would at a Western school where instruction is in a language in which you are fluent, you’re going to have to do a lot of planning. But I think this is just common sense.

Academic Freedom in Taiwan and Canada

I just received a notice about a posting on Dr. Erik Ringmar’s blog Too Many Mangoes. The post is ostensibly about academic lethargy in Taiwan. Dr. Ringmar points to a lack of accountability to the Ministry of Education for the vast sums of money they have recently been handing out.

As I point out in my comment to the post, I am a little uncomfortable with the whole thing. Only a month ago, I was writing about a Canadian professor, Dr. Denis Rancourt, who refused to follow any instructions from his employer, the University of Ottawa. Dr. Rancourt’s refusal to do anything other than what he wanted to do was widely interpreted as an issue of academic freedom.

Of course I understand what Dr. Ringmar is trying to say and completely agree with him. But I am very uncomfortable with the implications of all this. Professors in Canada ignore their employers and define their own responsibilities – it’s academic freedom. In Taiwan, it’s academic irresponsibility.

Why should the relationship between a professor and his professional responsibilities be defined differently because of his or her nationality?

Anaheim University Receives DETC Accreditation

Apparently, Google is still picking up old versions of posts about Anaheim University. I am reposting this in an attempt to assure that readers get the most current information about the school’s accreditation.

Anaheim University has informed me they now have accreditation from the Distance Education and Training Council (DETC). I last wrote about Anaheim back in 2005. It was an unaccredited, on-line university offering graduate degrees in business and TESOL. Despite this, it had affiliation with significant figures in the TESOL world such as David Nunan, Rod Ellis, and Ruth Wajnryb.

David Bracey, who is the school’s Chief Communication Officer, wrote to me describing recent developments at the school.

…our accreditation status has changed and on January 17th, 2009 Anaheim University gained full national accreditation from the Distance Education and Training Council (DETC), an educational accreditation agency founded in 1926 located in Washington, D.C. The DETC is recognized by the Council for Higher Education Accreditation (CHEA) and the United States Department of Education as an accreditor of institutions of higher education.

In the past, my blog has featured significant debate about unaccredited degree programs (also see here). At the time, I had seen no convincing evidence of high quality unaccredited degree programs. When I was asked about Anaheim University, to be honest, I was surprised they did not have accreditation. One reader pointed out to me that accreditation often stipulates continued operation for an amount of time, and as such new schools can not get accreditation from authentic accreditation bodies. It appears this was the case with Anaheim.

I’d like to thank Mr. Bracey and Anaheim University for keeping me and my readers informed with their most recent developments. Good luck

The Dark Side of Liberalizing Education

Today’s Taipei Times features an article about the use of alcohol advertisements at National Taiwan University. The article cites dean of NTU’s College of Sports and Recreation Cho Chun-chen (卓俊辰) that

the school had to accept sponsorship from a liquor company for this year’s National Intercollegiate Athletic Games because it was short NT$60 million (US$1.8 million) and could not find other sponsors.

In response, Vice Minister of Education Lu Mu-lin (呂木琳) is cited as saying the Ministry considered alcohol advertisements on campus

“inappropriate,” adding that it was the position of the ministry that students should stay away from alcohol. “Although schools are required to raise funds by themselves, they should nevertheless do so in an appropriate manner,” Lu said. “After all, it’s not like schools are private businesses,” Lu said.

Personally, I’m a little surprised by Assistant Minister Lu’s reaction. Of course his attitude is completely consistent with the historical interpretation of schools. But it is widely known that universities in Taiwan are underfunded in comparison with those in highly industrialized states. As I reported here, faculty salaries are at the same level as those found in India. The current trend toward forcing financial independence on schools has only made the matter more serious. The Ministry imagines us streamlining our budgets or the emergence of all kinds of innovative ways of getting our hands on cash. NTU came up with one of these, and it was only time until this happened.

Anaheim University

Anaheim University, based in Anaheim, California is a nationally accredited university offering online TESOL, business and sustainable management programs, including a 15-week online TESOL certificate developed by Anaheim University’s Dean of the Graduate School of Education Dr. David Nunan. The online MA in TESOL faculty is made up of 5 renowned linguists including its Dean Dr. David Nunan and Chair of the Graduate School of Education Dr. Rod Ellis along with Professors Kathleen Bailey, Ruth Wajnryb and Martha Cummings.

The entire MA in TESOL can be completed online with the exception of two 4-day residential sessions usually held in California. The University also holds residential sessions where there is a critical mass of students. Anaheim University’s October 2009 residential session will be held in Seoul, Korea at Sookmyung Women’s University. The residential session which will be held from Thursday, October 22nd through Sunday October 25th 2009 will coincide with Korea TESOL’s annual conference and Anaheim University will be one of the main sponsors of the conference, with Korea TESOL’s three plenary speeches being made by Anaheim University’s professors, Dr. David Nunan, Dr. Rod Ellis and Dr. Kathleen Bailey. Anaheim University makes its residential sessions open to those who wish to participate and the tuition for taking part in the 4-day session is US$800. There are 2 courses connected to the residential session. The first is a course on Curriculum Development co-taught by Dr. David Nunan and Dr. Kathleen Bailey and the second is a Research Methods course co-taught by Dr. Rod Ellis and Dr. David Nunan. Those who wish to take part in one of the online courses connected with the residential session can apply online at http://www.anaheim.edu

Universal Access to Post-Secondary Educarion

Everyone agrees that post-secondary education should be available and widespread and that this is necessary for a modern society. But just how widespread should it be? Should virtually every citizen have access to a post-secondary education? This was the topic of a post on the blog Higher Education Management addressing a recent statement from the Obama Administration that, in the words of the President himself, “…by 2020, America will once again have the highest proportion of college graduates in the world.

In Taiwan, the current rate of post-secondary attendance approaches 100%. The official Government Information Office (GIO 新聞局) website states the slightly out-dated figure from 2001 that 70.73% of senior high school graduates go on to attend higher education. In my presentations, I have been using the more recent, but still out-dated figure from the 2005 China Post that, “89.08 percent of graduates who filed admission applications after taking the entrance examination”. This 2007 article from the GIO-published Taiwan Review states that, “…tertiary enrollment rate reached 97 percent.”

This rapid increase in university attendance has not been embraced by the Taiwanese middle-class. Most educated in the previous generation would have studied in an elite system that used university education as a reward for government obedience. As such, the rate of admission to university was extremely low. But the point I want to express in this post is that Taiwan’s current rate is actually not at all out of line with that of other highly industrialized states.

A recent report from the British Columbia Ministry of Education indicates that virtually every high school graduate in BC will eventually attend a post-secondary institute of education. The Vancouver Sun summarizes the report’s results,

The study also found that of 44,978 B.C. graduates in 2005-06:

- 20.7 per cent registered later (by March 2008) or elsewhere, including 4.4 per cent at public post-secondary schools, 6.9 per cent at BC private post-secondary schools, 6.2 per cent at post-secondary institutions elsewhere in Canada, 1.4 per cent at post-secondary schools outside Canada and 1.3 per cent in adult basic education.

- 50.8 per cent registered at a B.C. public post-secondary institution for fall

- 6.9 per cent registered at B.C. public post-secondary institutions for fall 2007.

So of the 2006 graduating class, 78.4% eventually ended up at some sort of post-secondary institution.

The entire report , which is entitled Where Did They Go?, as well as other interesting information about education in BC, can be downloaded from this website.

While Taiwan’s situation may not be that much different from other similar economies, it is unclear exactly what all this means. The situation in Taiwan grew from economic necessity, but political factors have been a major part of why things took on their current appearance. Managing Taiwan’s growing number of unemployed university graduates has become a major political issue in the current economic downturn, but this has had almost no impact on the belief that university is good and that your child has to have a seat in a university.

As Dr. Keith Hampson pointed out in the Higher Education Management post that started this whole

…many people find the idea of expanding the number of college graduates very appealing. And its appeal is not based solely on ‘rational’ notions of productivity improvements and the like. Its appeal is also cultural. We like the idea of more people going to college because it taps into a collective sense of upward mobility.College for all” may be the knowledge economy’s “A chicken in every pot and a car in every garage” (Herbert Hoover, 1928).

Dutch Formosa in Perspective by Ann Heylen

The French Center for Research on Contemporary China (CEFC)

…is a publicly funded research institute, based in Hong Kong, and established in 1991. A branch office has also been set up in Taipei. The CEFC’s mission is to explore the political, economic, social and cultural developments in the contemporary Chinese world (China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macao, etc.).Besides organizing seminars and international conferences, the CEFC publishes China Perspectives (sister publication of the French-language Perspectives chinoises), a quarterly entirely dedicated to the study of the contemporary China. Jean-François Huchet is currently the director.

Recently, my friend Ann Heylen spoke at their 2009 lecture series about her research on Dutch Formosa. Ann and I are co-authoring the forthcoming book volume Understanding Taiwan: From Colonialism to Democracy scheduled to be released by Harrasowitz Verlag early next year. You can listen to an audiofile of her presentation here.

I also recommend listening to the presentation of Jens Damn of the Freie Universität in Berlin located just underneath Ann. Jens’ presentation is a more complete version of the paper he gave last year at Asia University. The paper was part of a panel on “The Narrative of Taiwan in Globalization” that included papers by Ann Heylen and me, as well as Dr. Lynn Scott from the English Deprtment at Fu Ren University.

Western Influence in Asian Education – Script Reform during the Meiji Restoration

A while back, I posted a comment on the blog Global Higher Education to this post by guest writers Moshidi Sirat and Ooi Poh Ling. The main point of the post is that local education systems in developing economies have been heavily influenced by the major Western powers that influenced their histories. For example, education in Singapore, Malaysia, and Hong Kong have all had strong British influences. My reply was that in some states, like Taiwan, local education systems have developed under local government control to serve their military or authoritarian needs. As democracy has been established, these states have become stuck with educational institutions that don’t quite fit into their new globalized world. As such, Western institutions can serve as models for how to better structure schooling.

This is not the first time in history that powerful global trends have shocked Asian states into restructuring themselves. Almost 150 years ago, dramatic changes shocked Japan from a feudal state into a major modern military and economic powerhouse. This period, referred to as the Meiji Restoration 明治維新, included changes that are now seen as instrumental in making Japan a world power. In this post, I want to talk about script reform and the redesign of learning in Japan.

Language in Pre-Meiji Japan

Prior to the Meiji Restoration, script in Japan was highly sylized. While there was a colloquial system of writing available, literature, government and documents were all written in a series of systems whose learning was only possible through years and years of study. These scripts were used within a highly structured system of  expression that was extremely difficult to learn. So stylized was written expression that, as researcher Nanette Twine (1983, p. 131) once put it, writing, “…had become an object of learning in itself.”

In addition, there was wide regional variation in colloquial language across Japan. The situation was similar to that found in Qing China. Japanese from different parts of Japan could  speak with each other only with difficulty or not at all. Also, pronunciation of written forms differed from region to region. So it was with a hugely difficult rhetorical style and a largely unstandardized script that Meiji Japan began its odyssey in the modern world.

The Meiji Restoration introduced a huge number of new changes into Japan. Some of these things were scientific and technical objects brought from the West. Others were concepts and ideas completely foreign to Japan. The Meiji brought about political reforms changing the relationship of the citizen with the state and economy. Citizens would no longer be peasants and instead were transformed into workers and consumers under industrialization. The older script and writing styles could not handle expression under these new conditions.

Script Reform

The observation that every advanced nation of the time used a phonetic alphabet had a huge impact on script reform. The obverse of this is equally as true. European languages have undergone enormous change to suit the demands of modern production and education. It would not be possible to have a modern society with the language situation of Norman England. Society as we think of it demands rulers who can speak directly to their citizens. It demands a citizenry who can freely take part in production. It demands a language that is hugely flexible to meet the needs of a society that has change built into its fabric. All of this entails a high level of citizen literacy and hence a language that can be taught in a public school system by marginally educated teachers. The writing systems of feudal Japan were none of these, and the only model available was European languages.

Over the course of the next few decades, Japanese intellectuals and officials debated a whole range of reforms. These included organized groups that advocated the use of various phonetic alphabets, as well as combinations of these alphabets with Chinese characters to transcribe colloquial speech. You can read all about this in Christopher Seeley’s book, A History of Writing in Japan or from the source of all truth, Wikipedia.

The significance of these reforms for me is not just in the ingenious solution that these thinkers devised. Students of the contemporary Japanese language rightfully complain about how awkward the script is to work with. But in fact, as a solution to problems presented by Tokogawa Era script, the current combination of Kana and Kanji is brilliant. The real issue for me lies in the inspiration that lead to these innovations.

In her history of the Genbunitichi (言文一致), that saw the transformation of classical Japanese into it modern form, Nanette Twine (1978 p. 355) discusses how Meiji Period scholars devised the systems that evolved into modern Japanese script.

The Genbunitchi movement after 1866 was in no sense the result of a natural evolutionary process; rather, it can be seen as stemming from one of the many catalytic ideas imported from the west about that time. Had Japan remained in isolation, traditional styles would doubtless have maintained their dominance and the colloquial would have remained confined to popular literature and occasional evangelical or instructive texts. Once the Genbunitchi movement and its attendant advantages had been observed in other countries, however, it became merely a matter of time before an attempt was made by progressive thinkers to introduce the movement into Japan.

Twine’s interpretation is that the modernization of Japanese writing was directly the result of Western influences. Thinkers and officials of the time modeled modern Japanese after European languages. The concept of an alphabetized writing system based in colloquial speech was derived directly from these Western models. Without their use as a model, there is little reason to believe Japanese reform would have moved in this direction. In fact, these changes were incredibly difficult to implement and stylistic restructuring of language use continued into the middle of the 20th century.

…and so what?

The problem of Western influence has come up before on my blog. As Michael Turton has pointed out, critics are extremely selective about the examples they choose to illustrate their case. No one ever points to the Meiji Restoration as an example of what Western influence can do, when, in fact, history offers few better examples. In the past, comments on my blog have raised the issue of imperialism in education. The claim is that ‘Western imperialism’ is shaping education through the new force of commercial education. My position on this is that imperialism is related to empire, and as such, this is incorrect usage. A more accurate term would be neocolonialism.

The concept of globalization is only poorly understood. The Japanese only reluctantly accepted their place as modern citizens in a world power. There was staunch resistance from displaced feudal lords who were yet to find their place in the ruling class. Initially, in a chapter of the Meiji that is generally forgotten, there was open war with the forces that opposed Restoration. At the time, it was not at all clear that opening up to change was the correct choice. There are probably few alive today who doubt this was the right choice, even for the families of the displaced samurai who were slaughtered. But even late into the 19th century, cultural elites continued to resist script and rhetorical reform.

I have argued that if Taiwan is to survive the changes of this century we need to adopt educational principles developed by people with a very different history and culture. The failure to do this will leave us at the mercy of economic architects with much more power to shape globalization. While I am not sure we are making the right choices, it’s clear that such choices have to be made – and that is why I applaud the efforts of the Second Global Higher Education Forum (GHEF2009). But if there is anything that history has taught us, not making these choices is wrong.