Taiwan aims to attract 150,000 international students by 2020 and ease regulations for inbound Chinese students President Ma Ying-jeou announced this month.
International students in Taiwan have more than doubled in the past five years reaching 78,000 last year up from 30,000 in 2008. Ma’s new goal follows ambitions previously set to reach 95,000 foreign students by 2014.
“Out target is to attract even more foreign students to our campuses, so that by 2020, we will have 150,000 of them that will account for 10% of the total college and university student population,” he said.
International students in Taiwan have more than doubled in the past five years
Ma said the objective is part of an “important election campaign promise” he made six years ago to increase in and outbound mobility in order to strengthen ties with foreign countries.
The president also mentioned the country’s birthrate, which fell 13% to 1.07 births per woman in 2013, as motivation to attract foreign enrolments to the country’s universities.
Taiwan’s profile as a student destination is on the rise thanks to government-backed and university sponsored scholarships, an improved academic reputation, widespread courses taught in English, and its proximity to China while still being a democratic society.
Ma is campaigning to relax the number of Chinese students allowed to enter the country and permit universities to hold expositions in China to attract more students.
Until 2011, Chinese students were not allowed to study in Taiwan and regulations currently allow only 2,000 students to attend university each year.
But they cannot study subjects involving national security or key technologies or have access to departments doing confidential research.
Chinese students are not given access to national health insurance and are also banned from applying for government scholarships, working while studying or looking for post-study work.
Ma argued that health care should be extended to Chinese students the same as it is to other foreign students.
“Allowing Chinese students to study in Taiwan is a policy that has more advantages than disadvantages”
“Allowing Chinese students to study in Taiwan is a policy that has more advantages than disadvantages…I believe in the competitiveness of Taiwanese universities, and if we set up boundaries, we will not get the best international students as universities in other countries do,” he said.
The number of Taiwanese studying abroad has waned in the last 10 years but ma said he will focus on increasing the number of Taiwanese students at US universities in order to strengthen cultural and trade ties between the two countries.
Since 2008, Taiwanese students studying in the US have fallen year on year. In 2013, 22,000 Taiwanese attended a US institution– down 6% from the previous year and “half the number when I pursued my graduate studies over 30 years ago” the president remarked.
