Chapter 2 Literature Review
2.3 Higher education evaluation in Taiwan
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Romeo (2008) presented another paper to respond what Julian and Ofori-Dankwa claimed in 2006. The author stated that AACSB facilitated the strategies of business schools, and encouraged the flexibility and creativity. He also holds a contrary viewpoint that the documentation of AACSB provided values to the performance of business schools.
Romeo showed the program growth profiles for the undergraduate and MBA programs from year 2000 to 2006 according to the AACSB’s DataDirect. The data presented that four program categories (distance learning, online program, off-campus program, partnership program) had increasing trend. The author stated that the diversity of accredited schools cannot be possible if the accreditation inhibited flexibility. The author disagreed with Julian and Ofori-Dankwa about the word
“accreditocracy” that they used in 2006. He stated that “it is hard to imagine any organization that would reward the accomplishment of major performance goal without verifiable evidence”. The accreditation doesn’t require useless paperwork as so called bureaucracy. Data collection is “useful for the school’s strategic planning and decision making”. The author pointed out that accreditation is a baseline for quality control and continuous improvement. This is an important feature and should be recognized by all programs of higher education.
2.3 Higher education evaluation in Taiwan
2.3-1 Development of the evaluation system
The evaluation of education in Taiwan dated back to 1963 (盧緒增，1995) for elementary schools. The broad evaluation for higher education was first started in 1973 (潘慧玲，2002). At the present time, there are four types of evaluation: (1)
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Administration evaluation, (2) Department evaluation, (3) Technical university evaluation, and (4) Technology college evaluation. (高教評鑑中心， 2008). Among these evaluations, the department evaluation is based on the spirit of approval, while the other three are based the ranking system.
The president of HEEACT, Dr. Liu stated the relationship between higher education evaluation and the policy of admission (劉維琪，2008). The first evaluation program for 4-year ordinary universities and military universities was initiated in 2006 on the basis of approval. For departments not approved by the evaluation, they had the second chance to improve themselves before any penalty from the Ministry of Education (MOE). The MOE, however, changed the policy on the next year that there was a reduction of enrollment of new students for those departments failed in evaluation. Liu argued that the evaluation should persist in the spirit of approval, and provide the weak departments necessary advices to improve their teaching and research quality. He suggested that well qualified universities can increase the number of enrollment, and let the disqualified organizations be eliminated by the market.
Lin (林尚平，2008) discussed the orientation of higher education evaluation in Taiwan. He pointed out some contradictory choices in the process of evaluation. For example, an evaluator might have an overall grading for the institution, and then dispersed the numbers into each items in the evaluation list. The evaluator could choose the other way by adding the numbers of each examined items to yield an overall grade. Although the final number was the same, it did have differences in the evaluation standards. Another concern raised by Lin was the diversified natures of various institutions. They might be different as public or private schools, in the number of students, or in urban or rural locations. The evaluations could be conducted
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by different grouping, or by setting anchor points to reflect those differences.
Lin (林尚平，2008) pointed out one very important issue that was the orientation of evaluation. The first type was accreditation-oriented as was conducted by IEET or AACSB. The accredited institutions were on the substantially equivalent basis. The second form was contest-oriented as was done by the American media for the ranking of various institutions. The contest-oriented evaluation compared the amounts of input and output as the standards of ranking. The accreditation-oriented evaluation judged if the program met the proclaimed criteria. The criteria might be adjusted with the changes of macro environment. Lin presented a very common example of student to instructor ratio that was often an argument in evaluations. The contest-oriented evaluation definitely would think that 17.8:1 was better than 18:1. Both ratios would be accepted by the accreditation-oriented evaluation if the minimum standard was 20:1 regulated by the government. The accreditation-oriented evaluation would further judge which one is more appropriate for programs with distinguished objectives. Lin stated that the trend of business management has shifted from the past performance appraisal to performance management. The continuous growth of an individual or an organization to match with the goal or objective is now more emphasized. It is the right time for the government to make a decision about the orientation of higher education evaluation. Lin’s conclusion is consistent with the statements from Liu (劉維琪，2008).
2.3-2 Arguments from higher education evaluation
The higher education evaluation results announced by HEEACT have resulted in tremendous opposition. For example, the Institute of Nuclear Engineering and Science of National Tsing Hua University was ranked as under inspection. The major reason
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was that this institute didn’t have 7 full time faculties as required by the Ministry of Education. The rebuttal from Tsing Hua University was very strong. The University argued that nuclear engineering was the first and specially designated department since its reactivation in Taiwan. Since the anti-nuclear movement in recent years, the department changed its name to Engineering and System Science. The graduate school remained as the old name with the same faculty in the department. It was reported by United Daily News (January 1, 2009) that the Dean of Academic Affairs of National Tsing Hua University did not accept the results, and he claimed it was HEEACT itself that really need evaluation. The previous Minister of Education, Dr.
Cheng, was also criticized by many members of the Academia Sinica, owing to the results of evaluation by HEEACT, when he delivered a speech there on January 19, 2009. Although Dr. Cheng confessed that the requirement of a fixed number of faculties in an institution was formalism, he did not agree that the evaluation should be based on the development target designated by the program.
The similar situation was encountered by the Institute of Law and Inter-Discipline of National Chengchi University. The evaluators criticized that this institute didn’t have enough (eg. seven) full time faculties. They also didn’t agree with that this program had future focus on the combination of medical science and law, or engineering and law, simply because this university didn’t have colleges of medicine or engineering. There was response in newspaper (方嘉麟，2009) that the evaluations from HEEACT and the job market were totally different. This inter-disciplinary program attracted many undergraduate students from various undergraduate fields, and the special objectives of the institute were not respected by the evaluation. The chairman of this institution indicated (郭明政，2009a) that HEEACT should challenge the policy of Ministry of Education, instead of putting
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cruel evaluation results to this innocent graduate program. He also pointed out (郭明 政，2009b) that the evaluation should not count the number of academic publications listed by SCI (Science Citation Index) or SSCI (Social Science Citation Index). The journals and impact factors collected in those indexes were managed by a commercial organization. It was stated (郭明政 2009b) that the ranking of law journals by Washington and Lee University School of Law were quite different from that by SSCI.
He demonstrated clearly that higher education evaluation should not judge the quality of research only by SSCI papers.
The Editorial of Economic Daily News (經濟日報社論，2009) commented that the higher education evaluation by HEEACT protruded the careless of policy, and resulted in the profound harm to the development of human resources. The origin of the recent evaluation was the bubble effect of higher education in the past ten years.
The Ministry of Education hoped to terminate unqualified programs through evaluation, although those programs were established under the national policy of higher education expansion. It was stated that some private universities invited retired distinguished scholars in order to strengthen the structure of faculty for formality’s sake. This editorial concluded that the neglect of diversified developments and overflowing of formalism significantly decreased the competitive potential of Taiwan’s higher education.
2.3-3 Perspective of higher education
The Ministry of Education made an announcement on March 25, 2009 about the recognition of professional evaluation organizations for higher education (大學自我 評鑑結果及國內外專業評鑑機構認可要點，2009). According to this announcement, the evaluation could be executed by the individual university itself, or by the
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organizations recognized by the Ministry of Education. The role of HEEACT might be changed to that of CHEA (Council for Higher Education Accreditation) in the United States. CHEA is not the executer of higher education evaluation, but stands as the role of supervisor (牟宗燦，2007). The former CEO of HEEACT stated the division of labor of evaluation from the viewpoints of planning, execution and feedback control (陳振遠，2009). The HEEACT will be responsible for the planning and feedback control parts. The practical execution of evaluation will be entrusted to other commissions.
From the literature review of the higher education evaluation in Taiwan, we can conclude as follow: (1) The evaluation is required to control the quality of education, (2) The present evaluation results are broadly criticized by institutions or programs under review, (3) The HEEACT suggested to divide the labor of evaluation to professional organizations, (4) The national policy is becoming clearer since the announcement released by the Ministry on March 25, 2009.
There are still many interesting topics that desire investigation. For example, more opinions from the programs being reviewed should be collected and analyzed.
The accreditation oriented evaluation is worthy of detail discussion. Finally, the outcomes-based evaluation, continuous improvement mechanism, and the strategy of global connection should also be studied. This research intends to analyze these topics through interview of professionals and administration leaders. The objective of this study is to supply a feasible direction to enhance the quality of higher education in Taiwan through appropriate evaluation processes.
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