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EDUCATION

Extracurricular activities play an
increasingly important role in Taiwan’s
education system.
Extracurricular activities play an increasingly important role in Taiwan’s education system.(Pang Chia-shan)
FACT FOCUS

  • Taiwan has implemented a 12-year basic education system since the 2014 school year.
  • There are 148 universities, colleges and junior colleges in Taiwan.
Education is an important component of government policymaking and accounts for a large portion of the budget. With an increasing emphasis on attaining tertiary education, those with a technical college or university degree account for 48.8 percent of Taiwan’s population aged 15 and above, an 8.1 percentage point increase over the past decade.
To offer students more opportunities, the Ministry of Education introduced the 12-year basic education to build on the nine-year compulsory education beginning in 2014. Every year in competitions such as the International Science Olympiad, young students from Taiwan win distinctions in biology, chemistry, earth sciences, mathematics, informatics and physics. The talent in Taiwan’s workforce has contributed tremendously to enhancing economic prosperity and quality of life.
Recognizing the multicultural nature of the nation, the government has included in its 12-year basic education system mandatory courses on Hakka, Holo, languages of Taiwan’s 16 Indigenous tribes and those of the new immigrants to spur the transmission, revival and development of such languages. Furthermore, to enhance the global competitiveness of Taiwan’s talent and industry, the government adopted the Bilingual 2030 policy in 2021.
 
Scholarship Programs
Both government and university scholarships are available for international students. The Taiwan Scholarship program, for instance, offers grants to students who wish to pursue undergraduate or graduate degrees in diverse fields. Interested applicants can contact the country’s embassies and representative offices or visit the MOE’s website https://english.moe.gov.tw/lp-24-1.html
To encourage international students to learn Mandarin in Taiwan, the MOE established the Huayu Enrichment Scholarship. This program enables foreign students to undertake Mandarin courses at 64 university-affiliated Mandarin learning centers around the nation, while also boosting international awareness and understanding of Taiwan culture and society.
A list of Mandarin training centers and information on learning the language in Taiwan can be found on the websites of the MOE, Study in Taiwan(www.studyintaiwan.org) and the Taiwan Mandarin Education Resources Center (https://lmit.edu.tw/lc/school_list/).
students enrolled in institutions of higher learning: total 1.14 million.
 
Yehliu Queen s Head