This paper contains a general introduction to engineering education in Taiwan, including its background, educational system, students and instructors. Some of the problems that engineering education currently faces are discussed, and their causes, their ramifications, and proposals for their solution are raised.

The scope of engineering education is very broad. It encompasses not just elementary schools, but also universities and graduate schools, and is a product of traditional culture, the family, employers, and all of society. This paper only discusses those parts of engineering education that take place within school system. Because public elementary schools teach a full range of subjects to all students, this paper's investigation of engineering education in Taiwan will be limited to universities, colleges, and graduate schools.

However, any discussion of engineering education as a whole cannot avoid taking into consideration the influence of culture, society, the family, government, and the economy. Only by adopting a macroscopic approach and looking at issues from all angles will it be possible to first gain a deep understanding of engineering education's developmental trajectory and current difficulties, and thereafter devise solutions for problems and set a long-term course for the future.

Chinese culture has been deeply influenced by the imperial examination system that flourished during past centuries. Chinese families place a premium on their children's education, and the saying "Learning is the noblest of human pursuits" carries great weight. Many families of modest means, even those who find it difficult to make ends meet, are willing to devote all available resources to giving their children the best possible education. They feel that their children's educational attainments will bring honor to their household and is the only means of raising the family's social status. As a result of this attitude, educators enjoy great prestige in Chinese society, and students receive much care and protection. Schools in Taiwan have consequently received a steady stream of talented individuals, enabling them to maintain tremendous vitality. Backed by a high level of public support, the government has instituted a long-term policy of low tuition fees, and the constitution stipulates that outlays for education, science, and culture should not be less than 15% of the overall national budget. Its financial role has given the government considerable power to shape the educational system and guide policies.

Another factor that has affected engineering education is economic development. Under Japanese colonial rule, Taiwan's economy was chiefly oriented towards the production and processing of agricultural commodities. During this period education emphasized medicine, industry, and agriculture at the expense of literature and law. Following the establishment of the Republic of China on Taiwan 50 years ago, the government implemented effective policies to compensate for the limitations of Taiwan's island geography and transform the agricultural economy into a semi-industrialized economy oriented towards processing and exports. Further transformations have resulted in sophisticated capital- and technology-intensive industrial and commercial economy of today. Thanks to the government's unstinting support, engineering education has provided an ample supply of highly-qualified workers, and these individuals have made a great contribution to Taiwan's dazzling economic success. Many aspects of engineering education in Taiwan are indeed a source of pride.

Nevertheless, social changes have continued to occur, and Taiwan's political and economic environment has undergone enormous transformations over the last few Years. Interest politics has led many talented students to enter the fields of law and administration. Due to the importance now placed on ecology and the environment, economic development no longer receives the public's unconditional support. The creation of large numbers of new schools has satisfied the need for educational resources and limited the educational system's prospects for expansion. Rampant individualism has drastically reduced the role of the family in reinforcing the educational system. The rise of utilitarianism and materialism has led to the commercialization and debasement of education. In conjunction with college students' greater interest in entering graduate school, the movement offshore of domestic industries and the import of foreign labor have led to the erosion of the pool of skilled industrial workers and technicians. These trends make it imperative for us to ponder engineering education's developmental trajectory, current state, and chief difficulties, and also force us to think about how the engineering education system should adapt and continue to develop.

The second section of this paper provides a brief description of Taiwan's educational system. The third and fourth sections analyze statistics concerning engineering students and instructors respectively. The fifth section discusses problems faced by Taiwan's engineering education system. Taiwan has implemented engineering education reform measures over the last few years.1 . The fifth section includes an in-depth examination of seven of the most urgent problems, including a discussion of their causes and possible solutions, together with issues that must be considered when instituting reforms.

Taiwan's educational system ₍₂₎ begins with nine years of elementary school and junior high school, during which time a full range of subjects are taught to all students. Depending on the student's ability, performance, and inclination, graduation from junior high school is followed by local entrance examinations and either senior high school or senior vocational school/five- year junior college. A small number of students enter the employment market directly after junior high school. The ratio of students attending high school and vocational school is roughly 3:7. After graduation from senior high school, approximately one-half of the students enter university or college. Of vocational school students, the majority enter the employment market and a minority enter a three-year junior college, two-year junior college, or technical college. Those students who wish to pursue advanced degrees may enter a master's or doctoral program.

Colleges seek to cultivate technical workers by providing training in the practical sciences. Depending on the school, colleges may provide education for five years, three years, or two years. A classroom lecture style of instruction is predominant, supplemented by factory practice in some cases.

The universities serve to cultivate professionals by providing an opportunity to perform in-depth academic research and study. A university engineering degree is typically completed in four years. While a minimum of 128 credit hours is usually needed for graduation, many engineering departments now require 140-150 credits.

In contrast, graduate schools are much more flexible. Obtaining a master's degree usually requires taking 24 credit hours over two years, writing a master's thesis, and passing an oral examination Individuals with an M.S. degree in engineering are currently in much demand by employers, and are especially needed by high-tech industries. A Ph.D. degree is typically completed over the course of four or five years, and requires taking a qualifying examination, writing a dissertation, and passing an oral examination. More and more departments now also require that the student publish an article in a reputable international journal before they write their dissertation and take their oral examination. Although these requirements are quite stringent, the demand for manpower at government and university research units has been largely satisfied, and the unwillingness of most firms to engage in advanced R&D has led to a high level of unemployment among individuals with higher degrees in certain fields

Figure 1 is based on a 1996 survey of the student population ₍₂₎ and shows that a total of 310,000 students were enrolled in universities during that year. Together with the approximately 400,000 students enrolled in colleges, students made up roughly 40% of their age group. Within the student population, the ratio of master's program students to (undergraduate) university students was 1:20 and the ratio of doctoral program students to master's program students was 1:3.5. These ratios should probably be considered to be more or less ideal.

Engineering students comprised almost one-half of the students within the college system. From this can be seen the role of the colleges in meeting the needs of society and the nation's economic development. While engineering students make up only approximately 20% of university students, this increases to 34% at the master's level and 37% at the doctoral level. This shows how the trend towards capital- and technology-intensive industries in Taiwan is steadily increasing the market for individuals capable of performing advanced research.

The proportional representation of different areas of specialization varies among engineering students at the undergraduate, master's, and doctoral levels. In general, we can divide the field into the four main areas of civil, mechanical, electrical, and chemical engineering. Although the total number of students in each of these areas is roughly the same, as Figure 2 shows ₍₂₎, there are significant differences in the distribution of students at the undergraduate, master's, and doctoral levels. In particular, the proportion of electrical engineering students rises from 24% at the undergraduate level to 29% at the master's level and 38% at the doctoral level. This reflects the demand for specialists in this area from Taiwan's flourishing electronics and electrical machinery industries. Because this trend will gradually work its way down from the doctoral level to the master's level and eventually to the undergraduate level, it can be foreseen that the number of undergraduate students in electrical engineering will rise steadily, while the number of students in the other areas of engineering will correspondingly decrease.

The number of engineering graduates is very closely linked to demand in the employment market. Figure 3 ₍₃₎ shows the growth in the number of B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. engineering degrees that have been conferred in recent years. Of particular interest is the extremely rapid growth in the number of master's degrees. Thanks to this trend, close to one-third of all undergraduate

engineering students now opt to study for a master's degree. However, only one-tenth of those receiving master's degrees enter a doctoral program. This shows that while Taiwan's industries now pay great attention to product development, there is not too much demand for frontier research.

Figure 4 shows the numbers of full-time professors, associate professors, and lecturers at colleges and universities- 2 Since an assistant professor system has only recently been established, the relatively few assistant professors have been included with lecturers in a single category. This chart also reveals that engineering instructors constitute roughly 20% of all university instructors, which is consistent with the proportion of university students majoring in engineering (see Figure 1). The great majority of university instructors have a Ph.D. degree. Since university engineering students number about 60,000, the student-teacher ratio is approximately 20:1.

In the case of college instructors, because engineering majors constitute 50% of all college students, a relatively high proportion--approximately 37%--of college instructors teach engineering. Most of these instructors are lecturers, who typically possess a master's degree. But because 200,000 college students are majoring in engineering, the student-instructor ratio is as high as 42:1. This is a manifestation of the fact that college instructors chiefly function as teachers, and engage in very little research.

Figure 4 Numbers of Instructors at Colleges and Universities During 1996. up

A: Professors
B: Associate Professors
C: Lecturers and assistant professors

Figure 5 depicts the growth in engineering research personnel at public and private universities and colleges from 1986 to 1994 ₍₃₎. While the number of researchers had clearly increased by 1994, this growth has now nearly ceased. The reason for this is the fact that, as stipulated by the constitution, the education, science, and culture budget now makes up 15% of the national budget. The good news is that, due to the increasing number of large enterprises that have invested in the establishment of universities and colleges, the number of engineering technology/research at private schools still increasing. The ratio of research personnel employed at public and private schools currently stands at 3.5:1; this gap is expected to gradually decrease in the future.

Figure 6 ₍₃₎ illustrates the steady growth of R&D expenditures at institutions of higher learning in Taiwan. Although such expenditures increased by a factor of four over a period of ten years--while the number of teaching/research personnel only doubled--after the effect of inflation is taken into account, the money spent per researcher has actually stagnated. The average annual R&D expenditure per engineering researcher was NT $1.6 million (or approximately US $60,000) in 1994. Because Taiwan has adopted a policy of keeping tuition fees low, a considerable amount of research project subsidy money is available for purchasing equipment and expendable items even after graduate students' living expenses have been taken care of. However, most schools lack sufficient technical support employees, and find it hard to retain such individuals due to lack of promotion opportunities. This has caused instructors' technical and administrative support needs to rise in proportion to the number of instructors and the acquisition

of new equipment. Instructors' increasing workloads have inevitably left them with little time or energy to devote to improving their teaching or research.

Figure 5 The Number of Engineering Teaching/Research Personnel at Universities and Colleges from l986 to 1994. up

Figure 6 Growth of University and College Engineering R&D Expenditures in Recent Years up

A DISCUSSION OF PROBLEMS CONFRONTING ENGINEERING EDUCATION

Instructors' and students' in-school activities are centered around teaching and performing research. The implications for reform are quite broad and problems are very numerous. Of the many aspects of engineering education reform over the years, only a few of the more urgent and thought-provoking problems will be examined here. Some of these problems have been addressed repeatedly in the past, and are by no means unique to Taiwan.

1. It is necessary to increase enthusiasm for teaching and create a suitable system of rewards and honors for effective teachers:

Engineering education in Taiwan faces a crisis. This crisis is that most instructors fail to demonstrate much enthusiasm for teaching. Among the many factors responsible for this attitude are the difficulty of instituting a system for removing incompetent instructors, the fact that the evaluation of teaching is little more than a formality, and a severe lack of technical and administrative support. However, there is little doubt that the most important and pervasive factor is that the importance placed on and material rewards given for research has caused instructors to correspondingly neglect teaching. On one hand, instructors' promotions largely depend on their output of academic papers and books; because of lack of objective standards, their teaching accomplishments mostly serve only as secondary evidence. On the other hand, the National Science Council's long-term practice of tying grant money to research achievements has given instructors who perform outstanding research a chance to win material benefits and bring honor to their school. This has made it so that university instructors, be they newcomers or senior faculty members, have taken research as the focus of their professional attention and produce reams of academic papers and articles. It is not surprising that enthusiasm for teaching has steadily waned.

Two different approaches to reform may be attempted. The first is to reduce instructors' teaching hours. As the need to perform research has increased, the Ministry of Education has set a minimum number class hours that instructors must teach each week. Schools and departments should be authorized to flexibly adjust these teaching time requirements so as to facilitate better curriculum planning. Such curriculum planning may include the creation of a core curriculum and the elimination of some overly specialized or unnecessary courses. This course of action would reduce instructors' teaching burdens and allow them to teach the core curriculum in a more effective manner.

The second approach to reform is to increase awards and honors for teaching so that enthusiastic and outstanding teachers receive the recognition and encouragement they deserve. Several years ago the Ministry of Education implemented a teaching award , but because schools and departments were made responsible for reviewing their own personnel, there was little opportunity for beneficial competition and mutual emulation between different schools. Because the awards came to be given to different individuals in rotation, the event became rather meaningless and was stopped after a few years. Because education has diverse functions and values, a variety of awards and honors should be conferred, and teaching and research should both be viewed as important. However, the process of conferring an award should also attempt to inspire a sense of honor.

2. Students should be given more practical experience, and the utmost importance placed on combining theory with practice:

The most significant social role of engineering education is the training of talented engineers who can participate in the nation's development. Thus the importance in engineering education of practical training and hands-on experience is obvious. There was formerly little contact between academics and industry personnel in Taiwan, and there was little overlap between their research interests. Moreover, instructors at public and private universities had no pressure or need to obtain backing from the industrial sector. This state of affairs caused the content of engineering education to become largely irrelevant to industrial needs. In the past nothing like the industrial academic cooperation programs long popular at universities in Europe and America had been implemented in Taiwan. But in recent years standards of industrial technology have improved markedly, and, in addition, the Ministry of Education has requested schools to arrange for a portion their own funding. An urgent question is how to take advantage of this opportunity to fully implement an industrial-academic cooperation system that can increase engineering students' and instructors' practical experience.

A broad inspection of the educational system reveals that besides providing students with the opportunity to perform practical work, even more important tasks are to adequately link theory with practice and stimulate students' creativity and innovation in order to provide domestic industries with a tool for dealing with global competition. To this end, more project courses and capstone courses should be offered--perhaps presenting students with the goal of creating a system or a finished product. These courses should provide a theoretical foundation, help students connect information in different areas, and let students learn from actual participation how to combine theoretical and practical engineering knowledge.

3. Innovative ideas should be realized in the form of products, while avoiding the pitfall of academic commercialization:

Thanks to the large-scale commitment of manpower and funding, engineering research in Taiwan has increased in scale and achieved many successes over the last few years. The number of Taiwanese papers published in the prestigious international journals has surged, putting Taiwan on the threshold of becoming one of the top ten producers of engineering research papers. In spite of this, to date not much local academic breakthroughs have led to significant commercial products. Likewise, virtually no local discoveries or projects have had a major impact on international science and technology. There have been no Taiwanese equivalents of Berkeley's development of the UNIX computer operating system or the introduction of the commercially-successful Yahoo! Internet directory service by a pair of American students. Among the reasons for Taiwan's lackluster showing in this regard are industry's shortsighted quest for quick results and lack of courage in creating new markets. Also to blame are the academic community's emphasis on quantity in research, acceptance of research for the sake of publication, and lack of pioneering spirit.

The National Science Council has encouraged and sponsored many industrial-academic cooperative research projects in recent years, and the results of some projects have already been transferred to industry for evaluation prior to possible mass production. However, since such projects are still more or less on the level of product development, more attention must be paid to truly innovative research. Moreover, it is not too early to think of ways to prevent the transformation of research ideas into real products from leading to excessive commercialization and utilitarianism. The close ties that have emerged between industry and professors at some universities on the U.S. west coast have caused these schools to devote great attention to product development work. This connection has turned students into a source of highly-skilled, low-cost labor, devalued the pursuit of academic knowledge, and changed the student-teacher relationship into an employer-employee relationship. If it persists over an extended period, this sort of academic debasement and commercialization will eventually tend to erode idealism and creativity. This is something that we must avoid while promoting industrial-academic cooperation.

4. Reform should be implemented on a partial, experimental basis; sweeping, authoritarian reforms should be avoided:

Many proposals for the reform of engineering education have found favor with the government over the years. Among the sources of reform ideas have been successive National Conferences on Science and Technology, various major economic development policies, the administrative plans of the Ministry of Education's Science and Technology Advisory Office, and the 1994 and 1995 "International Engineering Education Conference." Nevertheless, much educational reform has remained at the level of talk, and little effort has been taken to enlist the support of educational workers for reform proposals. Thus many plans have been made, but few implemented.

Educational reform should stress practical, tangible results. Government agencies such as the Ministry of Education and National Science Council should consider giving priority to reform programs conducted on a partial and experimental basis. Reform efforts should merely seek to provide alternatives that are not necessarily better or worse than other choices, but may be more applicable in certain situations. The only way to realize meaningful reform is to allow educational units to accept the new proposals of their own accord and at a gradual pace. The government must assume a supporting and coordinating role, and avoid trying to dominate the situation and dictate what schools' choices should be. If the government does not resist the urge to meddle, increasing confusion will result and enormous amounts of public resources will be wasted.

5. Equipment and teaching materials must be improved and brought up to date, but education must not be treated like a kind of fast food:

The effectiveness of engineering education relies heavily on classroom instruction, and the quality of equipment and teaching materials inevitably has a great influence on the instruction process. The great strides made by science and technology over recent years, the rapid development of computer and information technology, the increasing linkage of communications and multimedia, and the growing role of distance education have all had a great impact on instructional methods and materials. A specific objective of many educational reform efforts is how to harness new technological developments to increase the efficiency of teaching. Some applications of technology to teaching have already been implemented, and these applications are deserving of support and promotion.

Nevertheless, teaching activities should not just emphasize the rapid transmission of knowledge--even more importance should be placed on the process of acquiring knowledge. It is frequently the case that when teaching materials are brought up to date or old instructional equipment is replaced, attention paid to convenience of use outweighs that given to whether the materials or equipment can truly enlighten students and provide them with in-context knowledge. This attitude has resulted in students who only know how to operate equipment, but who are unwilling to or neglect to read the instruction manual and learn the equipment's operating principles and limitations. Students may know how to acquire data, but don't know that instruments must be calibrated before the beginning of an experiment. Students may know how to use analytical software, but don't know how to question or assess the correctness and applicability of results. Students often place importance on appearances, but neglect substance; they may value the rapid accumulation of knowledge, but fail to organize knowledge and place it in context. In this hurried, high-tech age, we must be particularly on guard against adopting a "fast-food" style of education.

6. Research teamwork should be promoted, but should not be allowed to suppress individuality and innovation:

While the fact that Taiwan's professors have not excelled at cooperative research must be blamed on the local culture, the design of the professorial system is also a major contributing factor. Taiwan's professorial system was largely modeled on the American system; its advantage is the vitality it provides, while its disadvantage is that there is a tendency for the rugged independence it promotes to dissipate resources. In fact many American universities require students to go through a long-term promotion process that includes post-doctorate research, assistant professorship, associate professorship, and finally full professorship stages. This has the advantage of giving graduates ample experience doing research in cooperation with professors. On the other hand, the fact that Taiwan formerly had only associate professor and full professor stages exacerbated the system's shortcomings.

In order to increase the amount of time instructors need to complete the promotion process, and hence raise academic standards, the revision of the University Law has led to the addition of an assistant professor stage during the last two years. In concert with the National Science Council's recent promotion of integrated research projects, the creation of assistant professorships should alleviate the problems of Taiwan's professorial system. However, integrated research projects should also avoid integration for its own sake and not hand too much power to influential professors. The latter problem will lead to students remaining their professors' followers long after graduation, and encourage them to continue their doctoral research into overly specialized and narrowly-focused areas. Only cooperative research that can attract workers with different backgrounds, different training, and different specializations, and allow them to interact and brainstorm, will succeed in generating innovative ideas; otherwise the research will be like inbreeding that accelerates the weakening of the group. Cooperative research should promote cross-pollination between different disciplines; cooperative research that only involves students in the same field and with the same background is not worthy of encouragement.

7. Instruction in engineering ethics should be strengthened, but emphasis should be placed on teaching by personal example:

Engineers must work in the real world, and must discharge their responsibilities to specialists, customers, colleagues, and the public. When a conflict of interest occurs, they must distance themselves appropriately. They must engage in lifelong education and always be ready to learn and apply new knowledge and skills. They must always collect information and use it to support their reasoning when they sincerely and constructively state their views. These are some of the topics that instruction on engineering ethics should discuss and emphasize.

However, where engineering ethics touches on personal conduct, studying dogmatic precepts and case studies will not be as effective as learning from the personal conduct of the instructors themselves. When necessary, instructors have the responsibility to be a model for their students.

Engineering ethics has received worldwide attention of late, and has been discussed in many settings and on the pages of many publications. Everyone must work together to place greater importance on this issue.

Engineering education in the universities is a very important link in the overall educational system. Because of the very close relationship between engineering education and national development in the past, the field received a large share of educational resources and attracted great numbers of outstanding instructors and students who possessed strong mathematical skills and analytical ability. With the support of society, engineers made a mighty contribution to Taiwan's economic growth, and engineering education wrote a glorious page in history.

In the wake of changes in the social fabric, law and politics have gradually taken engineering's place as the most attractive major for bright university students. The construction of new schools and expansion of existing schools has resulted in a near glut of educational resources. With respect to economic and industrial activities, the government is gradually changing its role from that of a coach to that of a referee. Fierce economic competitive is becoming the order of the day in the new postcold-war world. Looking ahead towards the future, engineering education faces unprecedented challenges, challenges that can be overcome only through the concerted efforts of all educators in this field.

After briefly introducing the current state of engineering education in Taiwan, this paper has discussed some of the difficulties engineering education confronts and their possible solutions. It is hoped that this paper will stimulate greater awareness of the importance and urgency of educational reform. It is also hoped that heightened public debate will help generate specific, feasible, effective reform methods. If all teachers involved in engineering education--both new hands and senior instructors--work together to formulate goals for improvement, draw up and implement reform plans, nurture students' innovation, integration, and practical skills, and raise the quality of instruction and research in every respect, then I am sure that engineering education will be revitalized and begin an era of robust health.

REFERENCES

1. C. T. Wang, College Engineering Education Problems in Taiwan, ICEE '97 Chicago, August, 1997

2. Ministry of Education, Educational Statistics (1996 edition)

3. R.O.C. Yearbook of Science and Technology

* The content of this paper does not represent the policies of the agency at which the author is employed.

Back to Table of Contents