Foreign students - Talents Recruiting - theory of globalization and human capital flow

Chapter 2、The theory of globalization and human capital flow

5.3 Talents Recruiting

5.3.1.1 Foreign students

國

立政治大學

‧

N a tio na

l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y

Table-15 The number of Aliens Residence permit in Taiwan 2002-2011

Year 2002 2003 2004 3005 2006 3007 2008 2009 2010 2011 foreign

workers 288,878 283,239 288,898 297,287 306,418 321,804 316,177 306,408 325,583 367,666 Business 4,987 4,034 4,207 3,878 3,197 3,752 3,474 3,665 3,782 4,467 Engineers 3,416 3,145 3,319 3,117 2,500 2,407 2,072 1,920 2,002 2,148 Teachers 5,976 5,958 6,831 6,630 6,185 6,009 5,655 6,106 5,923 6,748 Source: NIA 5.3.1 The aspect of the mid-level talented people

5.3.1.1 Foreign students

Many countries for the demand for talents are extending downward to foreign students. In the past, the salary of the foreign university graduates working in Taiwan shall not be less than $47,971, but need have 2 years working experience under the government conditions that is not conducive to recruit the young foreign talents working in Taiwan. Thus, the government amend the laws for "No work experience, but the salary not be less than $37,619" in June 2012 to attract the foreign talents. However, this policy only attracts to the population of the foreign students in Taiwan, but not truly for the foreign professionals. Moreover, the payment standards are very difficult to attract talents working in Taiwan compared with other multinationals excellent enterprises. Although the Government has actively proposed the various incentives to attract the foreign outstanding college graduates, the Taiwan foreign students and overseas Chinese students for education and employment in Taiwan, the effect seems to be limited in the past few years to study in Taiwan by the number of professional and technical immigrants and

‧

education. (Table-16 The numbers of the overseas students studying in Taiwan 2006-2011)

Table-16 The numbers of the overseas students studying in Taiwan 2006-2011

Year 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011

International students 24,511 27,738 30,067 34,285 37,177 40,843 The foreign students

for officially pursuing a degree

3,935 5,259 6,258 7,764 8,801 10,059 Overseas Students 10,320 10,861 11,426 12,840 13,562 14,045 Foreign exchange 5.3.1.2 Three limits and six noes for the Chinese students¹⁰⁶

After the lifting of martial law in 1987, the government opened up the policies of visiting the relatives, Taiwanese landing, sightseeing, mini three links that increased the speed of people communication on both sides. The two organizations from 1991 began the formal contact and consultation. The government took office the progressive completion of 18 agreements including the three direct links and ECFA after President Ma. As to the cross-strait educational exchanges, China has

106 楊淑涵（2011），《我國高等教育學生對招收大陸學生來臺就學政策之態度研究》。銘傳大學教育研

究所碩士班。"Three restrictions and six No"(三限六不) refers to "limit school, limited amounts, limited subjects" and "no extra points, not accounted into Taiwanese students quota, no scholarship, no part-time job, no license and no staying in Taiwan for jobs.

‧

set out the relevant provisions of the mainland schools to recruit students from Taiwan in 1985 and more than 300 schools now are available for Taiwanese students reading through a separate registration, examination and enrollment that the tuition fee is equivalent to the local students and established of a scholarship and working in China after graduation. According to the statistics of the Chinese Ministry of Education, it has recruited 15,141 Taiwanese students studying for the further studying until the end of 2007 with the growth.

To attract foreign students for higher education has become a national trend, coupled with the low birth rate under the influence of globalization that the market of Taiwan's higher education has been saturated. In order to maintain school operation and the development of the students, to promote Taiwan's democracy, to strengthen the cross-strait understanding and the implementation of the campaign platform, the 19^th Legislative Yuan of 2010, by "Three laws of the Chinese students¹⁰⁷" opened the Chinese students studying in Taiwan from July 2011. It has entered the second year this year under the populist driven that the number of recruiting the Chinese students is less than ideal (Table-17 The numbers of the Chinese students study in Taiwan). Moreover, the treatment of the Chinese students is unfriendly in life and laws that affecting the willingness to Taiwan (Table-18 The welfare comparisons of Chinese and foreign students in Taiwan).

Table-17 The numbers of the Chinese students study in Taiwan

Degree Bachelor Master PhD

Fields Finance, economy, law, business management, Chinese literature, international business, information engineering, communication, Electrical Engineering and Electronics Engineering are Chinese students preferred subjects

Recruiting school

132 schools of approved by the Ministry of Education (General, Technical and Vocational, excluding 5-year College)

Enrollment

107 "Three laws of the Chinese students(陸生三法) refers to the regulars of the relationship between the people on both sides, the University and College laws.

‧

Source: The University Joint Admission Committee of Chinese Students Table-18 The welfare comparisons of Chinese and foreign students in Taiwan

Chinese students Overseas students /Foreigners

Quota of people 1% 10% 5.3.2 The aspect of the high-level talented people

5.3.2.1 The flexible payment system¹⁰⁸ without efficiency

In order to attract the talents joining the academia, research and teaching fields, the Ministry of Education implemented the flexible payment system in 12 schools including the NTU, National Cheng-Kung University, National Tsing-Hua University, National Chiao-Tung University, National Cheng-Chi University in 2010 and 2011. The total applicable number is 2524 and 3113 people respectively, in which are serving 2498 and 2955 teachers raising their payment , new recruiting talents are only 26 and 158 people, the foreign teachers accounted for only 16 and

108 聯合報，《立委：濫用「彈薪」教授變相加薪》，2012 年 10 月 21 日。. The flexible payment system(彈薪方案) means the measures that open schools to recruit the special talents may apply to the National Science Council at any time. The National Science Council will invest NT 200 million a year after passing a review. Excepting the teacher salaries, the Assistant Professor level can obtain subsidy of NT $ 300,000 annually. The Associate Professor level can obtain subsidy of 60 million and the Professor level can obtain subsidy up to 90 million, grants of up to three years.

‧

國

立政治大學

‧

N a tio na

l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y

53. The ratio of the flexible salary subsidies for serving teachers is as high as 98%

and 94% and for the newly recruited talents is only 1% and 5%. In the twelve schools, National Taiwan Normal University and National Cheng-Kung University did not recruit any new teacher in two years, while the Central University, National Chung-Hsing University, The Yang-Ming University, NTUST and Chang-Gung University did not recruit new teachers one of each year.

The flexible payment system was intended to supply the schools with the flexible compensation standards to attract the foreign outstanding scholars working in Taiwan. However, it became actually in disguise for serving teachers for raising their payments, which is inconsistent with the talents purpose of recruiting foreign scholars and retain the local talents. This scheme is currently failure running. The Ministry of Education should do the audit work to the grant schools, rather than a waste of educational funds in raising their own salary. After seizing, it should be adopted to cut the education subsidies and give the warning and punishment that could truly achieve the purpose of recruiting the foreign scholars and retain the domestic talent.

5.3.2.2 Talent courtesy¹⁰⁹ effect is limited

The face of the challenges of the "Brain Drain" and "The world view of Taiwan incentives to recruit international talent", the government reduced the immigrating restrictions of the international professionals to actively attract the foreign talents stay and work in Taiwan and create the friendly environment for the foreigners.

Moreover, the government in the program of attracting the foreign talents worldwide to Taiwan promoted the issuance of "Academic and Business Travel

109 NIA.

‧

Card", "Employment PASS" and "Permanent Residence Card (Plum Card)" from January 2009¹¹⁰ (Table-19 The courtesy comparisons of the three cards) to create a friendly international environment. However, it still needs more efforts due to meeting the qualifications and the limited number of courtesy.

Table-19 The courtesy comparisons of the three cards Types "Academic and

Business Travel Card"

"Employment PASS" "Permanent Residence Card (Plum Card) " the job, and helpful in the establishment of the simplify the bid for the job, in order to attract the foreign white-collar the total share capital of NT $ 465 million and creating the 218 job opportunities.

Source: CEPA

110 Council of Economic Planning and development (CEPA).

‧

國

立政治大學

‧

N a tio na

l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y

Chapter 6 、The reasons of Brain Drain and the response strategies

Section 1、The reasons of Taiwan's Brain Drain

Thomas Friedman, the United States author, stated in New York Times Column¹¹¹ on May 2012 that the performance of Taiwanese talent is impressive despite its lack of natural resources. However, the Deputy Prime Minister of Singapore had some negative comments to Taiwan that reminded Taiwan facing the problem of Brain Drain. The government must pay more attention to attract outstanding international personnel.

The foreign professionals in Taiwan in the past five years have dropped the numbers from 29,000 people to 26,000 people, including the professional and technical personnel declined from 17,000 to 13,000 people. The number of professional and technical investment migrants decreased significantly that is a serious warning. This data represented that the Taiwanese business environment has a serious problem while facing of the global rise of regional economic organizations as the cooperative mode, such as NAFTA, EU, ASEAN, TPP, the APEC, TIFA, ECAP, CJKFTA, etc. Taiwan, the economic and trading country, will be marginalized and speed up the Brain Drain in the face of the countries allied with the talent exchange.

Taiwan is currently at the occasion of the adjustment of the industrial structure and people-oriented industry. In domestic, we not only continue to optimize the quality of human resources, but need more international experience to draw on the external talent to enhance Taiwan's international competitiveness. However, in the face of higher education development

111 卓越雜誌，《檢視我國人才流失問題》，2012 年 6 月，頁 16。

‧

國

立政治大學

‧

N a tio na

l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y

imbalances and foreign oncoming torrents recruiting, those are not only causing a shortage of talents, but also a Brain Drain. The comprehensive whole-related causes of a talent exodus are as follows.

6.1.1 Development of higher education imbalance

The traditional industries flourished in the 1980s due to the success of the operation of the vocational education system that creates the SMEs formation as the master key to the national economic development. A numbers of universities are set up to enhance the quality of human resources in the 1990s and the school upgrading became the main trend in which most technical and vocational institutions were transformed into science and technology universities or technical colleges. The education systems pay too much emphasis on examinations and ignore the importance of hands-on operation and experience, leading to high homogeneity in universities at the expense of diversity.

Thus, these talents are unable to respond to national development needs that are not only a waste of limited resources, but also worsen unemployment problems.

6.1.2 Acts and Policies unrepentant¹¹²

"Creativity" is formed through the absorption of external knowledge and brainstorming. Taiwan is a country somehow unfriendly to immigrants due to domestic unemployment concern. The Acts and Policies related to training, maintaining and recruiting are rigid resulting in foreign talents unable to immigrate and at the same time local talent moved out or encountered mis-match situations. Thus, it caused the crisis of talents imbalance.

As to the employment norms, the Government amended the law regarding

112 翁啟惠，中央研究院，《人才宣言》， 2011 年。

‧

國

立政治大學

‧

N a tio na

l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y

employement conditions and enterprises employing foreigners who have "no experience but the salary offered is not less than $37,619" in 2012. This amendment intended to convince the enterprises to increase the employment opportunities for foreigners studying in Taiwan. However, will this policy be able to attract foreign professional talents willing to work in Taiwan is still something to be closely monitored? This is just to help foreigners seeking employment opportunities in Taiwan, not the talents but the human resources. The other policies such as the related supports to facilitate foreigners staying in Taiwan are not modified, coupled with domestic investment environment not better than the neighboring countries. The unpredictable prospect of Taiwan's economic development and employment opportunities make many overseas students to choose other countries whose employment environment is better with good salary, strong research team and more opportunities for self-realization. The low payments and inflexible statutory policy are still main causes of talent loss leading to waste of resources spent in cultivating as well as recruiting talents.

Retirement policy is another barrier to retaining and recruiting talents. Taiwan adopted the system of single nationality such that foreigners shall give up their own nationalities before naturalization. The majority of foreigners do not want to forgo their own citizenship in order to obtain ours. Foreigners who have not yet naturalized cannot enjoy the social welfare resources and are not able to have the monthly retirement pension after retirement from the universities and research institutions. That meas they are deprived of protection for their retirement life. Thus, most of the foreign scholars declined to come to Taiwan or working for short-term because this system is unfavorable to international talent recruiting.

6.1.3 Industrial restructuring being slow

‧

國

立政治大學

‧

N a tio na

l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y

In the past, Taiwan's industry policy focus mainly on high-tech industries. After China's reform and opening up in 1987, China offered Taiwan's SMEs including the manufacturing, electronic, and OEM industries three-year tax- free, rent-free, cheap labor among others to attract a large number of businessmen setting up factories. With the economic upgrading of China, living standards improved and the implementation of the Labor Contract Law, the Chinese government required the Taiwanese enterprises to upgrade equipment and production. The Chinese Communists asked the business to restructure and upgrade. As a result, rising wages and operating costs suppress the profit margin. Thus, the small-scaled Taiwanese enterprises had to turn to Vietnam, Cambodia and other countries with the cheap labor. In Taiwan, the enterprises are restructured slowly, resulting in the loss of market opportunities, the revenue reduced and the low salary levels. Moreover, the situations of the no pay leave and layoffs are occurred frequently. The companies do not want to nurture talents. This long-term vicious cycle caused the continued economic downturn that are unwavering to the talent recruitment and accelerate the "Brain Drain".

6.1.4 Salary structure caused the adverse recruiting¹¹³

When Singapore, Korea, Hong Kong and China took the talent competition as a war and significantly modified the national laws and policies, Taiwan repeatedly considered the highly paid talents as an injustice symbol that is harmful to the talent recruitment.

Moreover, the government is lack of talent hiring flexibility given the rigid promotion system. Take the salary structure of teaching and research as an example, the civil service system forces everyone to be equal so that the compensation level (Table-20

113 中國評論網，《朱敬一：台灣正面臨科研人才斷層危機》，2010 年 1 月 25 日。

‧

The salary comparisons of the professors in the Asian countries) is difficult to retain the high-level talents. The Asian countries offer high salaries to lure talents and research teams of the high-tech and financial industries away. These factors do not only accelerate the domestic high-end "Brain Drain", but also will seriously affect the long-term competitiveness of the country.

Table-20 The salary comparisons of the professors in the Asian countries

Country Taiwan Hong Kong Singapore China

Contents

Postdoctoral

research assistant of the Academia Sinica's Institute

Professor Professor Professor

Annual

Source: China Review Net, " Zhu Jing-yi: Taiwan is facing the faults crisis of scientific research personnel's", January 25, 2010.

6.1.5 The tax shortage¹¹⁴ is not conducive to the talent competition

In order to foster the industrial development, the tax was cut to boost the private investment in the past that introduced the Investment Incentive Ordinance (1960-1990) and the Statute for Upgrading Industries (1991-2009), Industrial Innovation Act (2010) to provide the domestic enterprises the tax concessions. In Asia, the Taiwan's business income tax was reduced from 25% (2007) to 17% (2010)¹¹⁵, which is lower than that of China (33%), Korea (27.4%), Singapore (20%), Hong Kong (17.5%). Moreover, the

114 楊志良，台灣大崩壞（台北：天下文化），2012 年 4 月 27 日第一版，頁 85-86。

115 www.nat.gov.tw/investtaiwan

‧

國

立政治大學

‧

N a tio na

l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y

business effective tax rate is only 10% after deduction of annual 120 billion business tax concessions, which is even much lower than other countries.

In the past, the government promoted export-oriented development model during 1960-1980's in which foreign exchange control and tax cut were adopted to assist capitalists rapid accumulation of wealth through reinvestment and to create more job opportunities. This strategy did make the Taiwan's industries prosper. The average economic growth rate was 8% in 1991. From 1980 to 1990, the implementation of the ordinance by expanding the business tax concession to promote the industry lowered the economic growth rate to 5-6% in 1998. Afterward, the policy of the imputation tax concession contributed the economic growth rate swapping to 4% and even appeared -2.17% in 2001. A series of tax concessions did not help the economy much, but result in the national construction constricted and stretched. As the world economy was downturn, the enterprises took the pay freeze, layoffs and unpaid leave to save the cost.

The government reduced public expenditures, but increased the investment. Moreover, the government was short of effective talent policies to consolidate the existing talents to avoid a vicious cycle when all countries are luring them away by various incentives.

Thus, challenges of Brain Drain and loss of competitiveness in the future shall be a serious national concern.

6.1.6 The shareholder¹¹⁶ dividends limited the development of talent

Taiwan's high-tech industry would like to retain the talents through the system of paying the stock bonus to the employee so that employees do not have to purchase the stock to become shareholders of the company. It was a common practice to retain

116 蔡文達（2003），《員工分紅入股制度對高科技產業發展之影響》。國立雲林科技大學企業管理系碩士

班。

‧

國

立政治大學

‧

N a tio na

l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y

so-called "Hi-tech Elite" in high-tech information industries of TSMC, Foxconn, Media-Tek. The enterprises template the fresh graduated talents from top science and engineering with high salary, and then retained them with the stock bonus that reduced them the willing to study abroad for their further studying, which is detrimental to the development of Taiwan's high-tech industry. When the top engineers is paid the temptation who do not want to engage in the basic scientific research, study abroad, learning, innovation and entrepreneurship. These shortsighted talents are used by the enterprises, but not incubating, recruiting. These problems caused the recruiting by the high salaries and the phenomenon of the Brain Drain is frequent, that damage the

在文檔中從台灣人才外流現象探討人才危機 - 政大學術集成 (頁 116-0)