Taiwan universities want more students from Macau

The number of Hong Kong and Macau students studying in Taiwan has been decreasing over the past four years, and Taiwanese universities are calling on their government to loosen restrictions on enrollment quotas for students hailing from the Hong Kong and Macau Special Administrative Regions.

According to statistics released by the Ministry of Education of Taiwan, the number of Hong Kong students going to Taiwan for higher education has declined for four consecutive years, and the number of Hong Kong high school graduates going to Taiwan because of the self-governing island’s overseas joint recruitment program declined from more than 6,000 in 2004 to only 2,416 this year.

Lai Tsung-yu, the dean of Academic Affairs at National Chengchi University, hopes that there can be a 10% increase in the enrollment quota for overseas Chinese students at Taiwan universities. In particular, Lai also wants a 10% increase to be approved for the number of Hong Kong and Macau students.

Michael J. K. Chen, the president of Shih Chien University, has proposed that the Taiwan government should see Hong Kong’s recent protests as an opportunity for the island’s universities to enroll more Hong Kong and Macau students.

According to Chen, Taiwan’s official joint overseas student recruitment program cannot help Taiwanese universities to recruit outstanding students from the two SARs. In recent years, Chen’s school has been recruiting Hong Kong and Macau students by itself.

Chen believes that if the number of Hong Kong students can be doubled, more Hong Kong and Macau students will come to endorse Taiwan’s way of life.

According to the organizer of the official joint student recruitment program of Taiwan, the drop in the number of Hong Kong and Macau students is related to mainland China’s financing policies. For example, China provides various types of scholarships for Hong Kong and Macau students and has expanded enrollment quotas, with such measures weakening the advantage of Taiwan.

The mainland has also ramped up restrictions on Taiwan in order to punish the island’s president Tsai Ing-wen, who has refused to endorse the “One China” Consensus that previously underpinned cross-
strait ties for more than a quarter-century.