Case description

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4.2 Case 1 ”University Corporations Project” from Ministry of Education (2002-2007)

4.2.1 Case description

Between 2002 and 2007, the MOE proposed the “University Corporations Project” to strengthen competitiveness of higher education by transforming all national universities into university corporations. In this case, the task force in the MOE represented policy

entrepreneurs who propelled policy change. The main pursuits of this project are listed below (MOE, 2006).

1. Transforming universities into corporations for university autonomy

Rigid regulations on operation of universities have constrained competitiveness of Taiwan’s universities in global arena (MOE, 2006). National universities in Taiwan, defined as governmental agencies, should abide by regulations for public institutions.

Those rigid constraints on personnel recruitment, finance management and internal governance lessened competiveness of universities. Thus, in this project, the MOE expected to delegate national universities with independent entities via transforming all of them into university corporations. Once national universities are transformed into university corporations, they will be exempted from those governmental rules. Based on the “University Corporations Project”, university corporations would be exempted from the Budget Act, Accounting Act, Audit Act, and Financial Statement Act. Universities would have exclusive autonomy to build their own finance management, personnel mechanism, and accounting systems.

2 Establishing a board of trustees for social responsibility

The increasing gap between the social expectation and universities’ accountability is another problem of higher education in Taiwan. In the beginning of 20^th century, though the enrollment rate of universities reached ninety percent; most universities focused on academic research and bear limited social responsibility. Powerful university councils organized by faculties have dominated the decision-making process in national universities; that domination led to conflict of management between university presidents and university councils in campus. Thus, the MOE planned to establish a board of trustees and they anticipated that external committee facilitates universities to

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involve more social issues from its extant enclosed system. These trustees,

representatives from universities, industries and societies, will examine university presidents’ proposals and make final decisions on universities’ operation affairs.

Moreover, national universities would operate as independent university corporations while the MOE, the conventional supervisor of governance, shifts authorities of governance to every board of trustees affiliated with university corporations.

3 Allowing dual-track pattern and old father rules for diverse institutions Considering the diverse scales and traits of higher education institutions in Taiwan, the MOE allowed dual-track and old father rules in this project. In accordance with the Draft of University Act, Higher Education Consultancy Committee will evaluate a series of requirements of university corporations. For universities without sufficient capability to become independent organizations, those institutions could remain as national

universities. As old father rules, most of staff in national universities are civil servants with tenure, so they can choose to maintain current positions by transferring to other governmental agencies or to shift into contacted-staff with certain amount of

compensation.

Important events of “University Corporations Project”

The initiative of “University Corporations Project” can be traced back to the Council of Education Reform who discussed university corporations since 1996 (Tien, 2007). In order to realize the proposal from Council of Education Reform, Executive Yuan announced the movement of reorganization in 2002 and drafted “Non-Departmental Public Bodies Act” for regulating reorganization of public institutions. Therefore, corporatization of public

institutions became the major policy agenda to Taiwan’s government. In 2003, the MOE submitted the Draft of Amendment of University Act to Legislative Yuan with a chapter on establishment, operation, evaluation and relevant guidelines of university corporations.

Nevertheless, the MOE failed to negotiate with opponent political parties and legislators, for most faculties’ associations and university councils were against the “University Corporations Project”. The chapter on university corporations was completely deleted by the Committee of Education and Culture in the Legislative Yuan in 2005.

After this failure aforementioned, the MOE hosted several meetings with research-oriented universities in the same year, and they expected to find a solution to gain universities’ support

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by these meetings. In the end of 2005, instead of submitting a complete chapter on university corporations, the MOE only preserved an article on university corporatizations in the

Amendment of University Act. By proposing an article on university corporations, the MOE expected to keep their flexibility in the policy design and to preserve an article for future policies. This attempt was still denied by the Legislative Yuan because the most of faculties hadn’t been persuaded yet.

The MOE didn’t give up and launched an “Aim for the Top University Plan” in 2006. That is a competitive grant project, which required universities to submit a proposal for university corporatization as a prerequisite. Though ten public universities receiving the grant proposed a plan for university incorporation, no universities fulfilled their proposals (Tien, 2007). In 2008, after a series of trials, the MOE announced publicly that “University Corporation Project” was suspended (MOE, 2014). Important events of “University Corporations Project”

are listed in the table 13.

Table 13 Important events of “University Corporations Project”

Time Important Events

1996 Council of Education Reform announced university corporations should be taken into consideration in higher education policies.

2002 Executive Yuan passed the proposal on university corporations and drafted

“Non-Departmental Public Bodies Act”.

2003 The chapter on “University Corporations Project” proposed by the MOE failed to pass the Committee of Education and Culture in the Legislative Yuan.

2005 Legislative Yuan deleted the whole chapter of ‘’University Corporations Project’’ in Draft of University Act.

2005 The MOE proposed an article on university corporatizations in Draft of University Act instead.

2005 The article on “University Corporations Project’’ was deleted by the Legislative Yuan.

2006 Ten research-oriented universities proposed their plans for university incorporations in accordance with “Aim for the Top University Plan”.

2008 The MOE announced that ‘’University Corporations Project’’ was suspended.

Source: Adapted from (MOE, 2013; Tien, 2007)

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