Chapter IV A Narrative of the Fulbright Program in Taiwan: 1979-2019
C. Programs and Activities
4. Grants Issues
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cultivate American-style debate skills and create a vibrant community to compete in Taiwan NSDA/TOC
33Tournaments.’ (FSE, Awards to Taiwan, 2020)
Another administrative issue related to FSE’s accounting system and auditing schedule originated from the different budget calendars of Taiwan and the U.S., and was resolved in 2007. [282:2006/10/4] The fiscal year (FY) in the U.S. government is from October 1 to September 30 in following year. Taiwan government’s fiscal year changed in 2001 to start from January 1 to December 31, as a calendar year. Most activities at FSE follow an academic calendar year, July 1 to June 30, with most grantees arriving in the early fall and most departing in the late spring. Prior to 2007, FSE followed the U.S. government pattern, which made it very difficult to understand the relationship between the scholarship program and the budget. A grantee’s stay in Taiwan or the U.S would flow over two accounting periods.
All technical issues of accounting were solved after FSE had an in-house accountant and adopted an academic budget year from July 1 to June 30, which meant that the income and expenses would reflect the activities. The expenses for a grantee would all normally fall within the same budget year. As a result, FSE has to postpone the final approval of grantee awards until the September Board meeting, after the beginning of the July 1 budget year.
Hence, beginning in 2007 the budget and the actual income and expenses began to track each other. The only inconvenience was that this meant a one-time, short budget year of 10 months in the transition from October 1 to July 1 as the start of the new budget cycle. And, the final awards cannot be officially inked until September’s Board meeting.
4. Grants Issues
Another fundamental issue came to the surface after many decades of practice. After 1979, FSE awarded “only partial grants” to Taiwan grantees “in order to help more applicants.”
[282:2006/10/4, p17] This was a well-received creative idea of expanding FSE’s impact and contact, and also made Taiwan “the only Fulbright program that offers partial grants.” Even later in 2000s, when FSE had a better financial forecast, it never “reduced the number of
33 National Speech and Debate Association (NSDA) was created in 1925 in the U.S. The Tournament of Champions (TOC) is an U.S. national high school debate tournament held in University of Kentucky every year since 1972, and is considered one of the most prestigious and competitive American high school debate tournaments.
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grants to Taiwan applicants with full grants.” [287:2007/12/18] Many decades later, this
‘partial grant’ policy led to a future problems of high decline rates in recent years among those offered grants.
In fact, Taiwan grantees receive partial grants as they also receive supplementary funding.
[287:2007/12/18, p14] A concept of ‘joint grant’ was initiated to work closely with NSC to co-sponsor Taiwan scholars to do research in U.S. Then, an initiative of post-grant
cooperative research, first of its kind, was created in 1986. A research proposal by Dr. Gary G. Hamilton and Prof. C.S. Kao, NSC provided a US$200,000 grant to FSE for its
implementation. It involved researchers from the U.S., Taiwan, Singapore, and Hong Kong.
[242:1986/8/20] However, it was not until recently, when FSE institutionalized the concept of a co-brand grant with Fulbright as a hyphenated program, that there was a big growth in partnerships with the private and public sectors, as noted elsewhere.
Actually, the ‘partial grant’ was not a ‘new’ program created by FSE, but rather an idea or strategy that FSE used for leveraging funding. By offering a partial grant, FSE could increase its number of grantees with its limited funds. By awarding a Fulbright, the grantees could receive services and benefits from IIE and CIES, which the U.S. State Department paid centrally in the U.S. Thus, it increased the real funding for FSE. The format could be for any, kind of partial/supplementary financial support, travel-only grant, and/or just a token
minimum grant. This partial grant was extended to the aforementioned non-academic
professionals, joint projects, and hyphenated programs. They were all under the big umbrella of partial grant co-sponsored by FSE.
In early 1980s, most of partial grants or financial support were requested by individuals, and were decided case-by-case by the Board. “The applications for financial support only those qualified for non-programmed support under the FSE’s bylaws.” [224:1983.4.20] But, the amount of grant could be very small, i.e. US$400 for attending an academic meeting in Hawaii. The case could also be as simple as a long-time routine travel-grant support. For example, the FSE had supported travel-only grants for National Kaohsiung Teachers’ College for its exchange program with Eastern Illinois University and for participants of the training program organized by the U.S.-based Council for International Programs (CIP).
It was not until mid-1986 that the Board made its first policy guidance for the Executive Director to follow: it “should be priority fields, that the opportunity should be widely
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announced, probably during the second semester when the amount of funding available would be known, and that the assistance should be in the form of travel grant.”
[236:1985/6/26] As subsequently this category of program grew bigger and bigger, the non-academic professional was split from the partial grant and created into its own category in 1982.
Although the U.S. continued to provide funds, the amount of grant each grantee could receive was reduced. Instead of cutting numbers of grantees to provide full scholarships to fewer, FSE offered partial grants and looked for cooperation opportunities with other institutions to get more funding for each grantee. This was particularly true for Taiwanese going to the U.S.
for graduate education at U.S. universities. The major strategy was to do the best to maintain or increase the total number of grants. The benefit was that for each grantee the U.S. end had to provide a certain amount of funding from intermediary agencies or universities, so the total amount of in-kind contribution increased. The downside was that it was extremely difficult to find extra funding for each partial grant. FSE had to compete with other government agencies and universities for subsidies, or help our grantees apply for scholarships from American universities. For example, FSE often helped doctoral students with their application for scholarship at the universities they were going to in the U.S. This helped boost the total number of grantees.
Ahead was a new problem: the competitiveness of Fulbright program, which applied to both the program and its applicants. Since early-1990s, FSE encountered an issue of a ‘small number’ of applicants for the American lecturer and researcher awards, and the student grant awards. For the 1991 program, there were a total of 17 applications for the FSE scholar openings announced by CIES; and, 13 student finalists were chosen by IIE out of a pool of 43 applicants. In fact, not only to Taiwan, but “most Fulbright commissions [were] facing
recruitment problems, possibly because Fulbright grants [were] not competitive any more”.
[254:1991/1/25] Fulbright’s financial attractiveness was decreasing, in part because many other scholarship programs had also become available.
To the Fulbright Program itself, the competition not only comes from the long-lasting European programs offered by the British Council, Alliance Francaise, and Deutscher
Akademischer Austausch Dienst (DAAD, German Academic Exchange Service), but also the newly emerged programs from the East like: the Japan Exchange and Teaching Programme (JEP) (Japan, 1987), the Global Korea Scholarship Program (Korea, 2010), and China’s
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Confucius Institutes. And more, the Fulbright may have lost some of its prestige and recognition. [280:2006/3/7] Regarding its study grant, U.S. education had become less attractive to Taiwan students. An IIE statistics showed that “Taiwan students in the U.S. had been declining steadily since 1995,” from a high of 34,607 in 1994. The Board observed the reasons were, as follow: “a vigorous recruiting effort from the U.K., Australia, Canada, and even France and the Netherlands; and, more students were remaining in Taiwan for graduate education, where such programs have been increasingly rapidly; and lower costs and easier admissions of programs in other countries.” [271:2001/12/14]
In the past ten years, the decline rate had become a significant issue and problem in the U.S.-Taiwan Fulbright exchange programs. It was reported that, “one of the two U.S.-Taiwan Fulbright student grantees selected for a full grant declined the award, and the other candidate received a full ride at Dartmouth and only needs funding for books and airfare.”[298:2011/3/29] This was not just happening to FSE, but it was a regional issue which had been discussed at the ED regional meeting.[298:2011/3/29]
For FSE, the reasons for decline had been studied and explored, and can be summed up to four categories:
1) Financial reasons: the ‘grant amount’ for Taiwan scholar [302:2012/3/24]; the scholarship for Taiwan students was not enough [303:2012/9/27]; not a full ride scholarship [306:2013/5/16]; received a full scholarship to Oxford University [303:2012/9/27] or a better grant from Harvard University. [288:2008/4/10]
2) Timing of announcement in late spring, in particular for ETAs. [310:2014/5/10]
3) Fulbright requirements: binational citizen, the limitation of J-1 visa required for returning to Taiwan; did not get admitted to the American universities, two exceptional cases because of their rare fields of study. [307:2013/9/26]
4) Personal reasons, [303:2012/9/27] they can’t go to the same city with their spouse, or they change their mind and end up studying in the U.S. or elsewhere [303:2012/9/27]
includes those who had waited for a better university’s admission
Besides the “timing” that could be easily solved by change the administrative procedure, there seemed not much FSE can do, except for a possible resolution for the ‘financial reason.’
Truly, the amount of FSE’s “stipend is too low.” [308:2013/12/10] A comparison of what other EAP commissions fund their grantees showed the FSE funded US$13,000, others pay
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US$25,000 or US$35,000. [306:2013/5/16] The only way to change this is to increase
“significantly the financial amount of the grant” [307:2013/9/26] But, “because the pool of the money is fixed, FSE has to decrease the number of scholarships in order to increase the amount of stipends to improve the quality of the applicants.”[308:2013/12/10] This is a dilemma can be tackled, but there is no panacea. The result might be a decline in the number of grantees, which was unappealing.
III. A Brief Summary
After the 1979 diplomatic breakup between U.S. and Taiwan, followed by the complication of triangular relations among U.S.-PRC-ROC, the Fulbright Program in Taiwan had lost its binational legal status. The binational commission was renamed to a neutral FSE, but kept its format of a binational commission. Also, it has been run as a binational, but is in a third category beyond government and non-government, as are all issues related to Taiwan’s status, following the Taiwan Relations Act of 1979. A unique status in international affairs, Taiwan status, receives a connotation of “in the context of ...” in an Annex to Taiwan whenever it was mentioned or referred to.
Subsequently, Fulbright Taiwan’s budget from U.S. State Department was ‘independent’
from the global Fulbright program’s line budget. It was incorporated under AIT’s budget. As a result, since 1980s, the Fulbright budget from U.S. government was flat in a level of US$568,000, had avoided two big budget cuts of Fulbright Program worldwide and also did not benefited from subsequent large budget increases. Also, literally, the PAO/CAO in AIT could take the Fulbright budget for other purposes/usages, since it is not a line item in the AIT total allocation.
Taiwan government’s central funding also switched from NSC to MOFA due to the governmental restructure, and new budgetary regulations. Without a formal legal status, many administrative issues occurred, and the U.S.-PRC-ROC relations not only prolonged but complicated the resolutions. It was not until 2010 that a diplomatic note exchange resolved the major issues, but not all the problems.
One stable, driving force for the continuance of FSE was the life-long service of ED, Dr. Wu, Jing-jyi, from 1977 to 2009; and, after he retired from ED, Wu has been serving on the Board. The Board of Directors has fluctuated, often changed, and sometimes met only once
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or twice a year. He is not only a living history of FSE, but also the linkage that led FSE through all upheavals of the rough history, all the ups and downs. From 2011 to 2019,
William Vocke, the longest serving American ED by his retirement, was an outsider directing an expansion of FSE. This drive included: fund-raising, strategic partnerships, aggressively approaching the State Department for hosting/organizing Fulbright activities in Taipei, presentations, and outreaching beyond EAP. Fulbright Taiwan became a ‘beacon program.’
Both budget and grants grew 3 times in 9 years. This proves Taiwan’s soft power embodied in its citizens, and the shining of Taiwan to the world.
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Chapter V
Portraits of Fulbright Commission Programs in East Asia and the Pacific
Beginning in Asia, the first three Fulbright bilateral agreements were signed. The Fulbright Program started its educational exchanges with the East, opening America Society to Asia.
Also, global statistics show 80% Fulbright alumni were grantees coming from and going to countries with binational commissions (L. Johnson, personal communication, January 5, 2017). Commissioned programs, not post-based or embassy-based program, are the basic foundation of the Fulbright program.
To have a better understanding of the binational spirit of Fulbright exchanges and to lay out a broader background of the Fulbright practices in the EAP region, this chapter compiles the portraits of the other eight commission-programs. Then, three comparative tables are
produced for an overall snapshot review which may shed some light on bilateral educational exchange for public diplomacy. Hopefully, this collection of these preliminary facts and statistics would set a foundation or serve as a stepping stone for further comparative research.
I. Introduction
As of July 2020, there are more than 160 countries worldwide participating in the Fulbright Program, among which are 29 countries and areas in the region of East Asia and the Pacific (EAP). Only 9 programs, in EAP, were operated by ‘bilateral Fulbright commissions’ in their host countries. There are 49 worldwide ‘commissions,’ non-profit organizations established on the basis of executive agreements signed by two governments and with a Board that is evenly composed of citizens from the two partners. The nine binational commissions in EAP are hosted in the following countries, in sequential order of their establishments: The
Republic of China (Taiwan) (1947), The Philippines (1948), New Zealand (1948), Australia (1949), The Republic of Korea (1950), Thailand (1950), Japan (1951), Malaysia (1963), and Indonesia (1992). Among them, seven34 are listed on the first 27 initial countries that signed agreements between 1947 to 1953; and, Malaysia and Indonesia joined in the “second” and
34 The Fulbright Program in Taiwan was a reactivated program of the USEF/C, and its statutory basis was the 1947 Agreement, as amended in 1957. Also, USEF/C was publicly recognized by BFS, Senator Fulbright, and U.S. President Ronald Reagan on their congratulative messages before 1979. Thus, I suggest the Fulbright Commission in Taiwan, FSE, not only was one of the initial countries, but was also the first agreement.
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“third waves” (L. Johnson, personal communication, January 5, 2017), respectively signing agreement in 1963 and in 1992. Some established commissions are inactive at present, include the world’s 2nd signatory Burma, which now is an embassy-based program.
Table 5.1
Fulbright Binational Commissions in East Asia and the Pacific
Country Agreement signed Binational Educational Commission Australia November 26, 1949 Australian-American Fulbright Commission Indonesia July 15, 1992 American-Indonesian Exchange Foundation Japan August 28, 1951 Japan-United States Educational Commission Korea, The
Republic of
April 28, 1950 Korean-American Educational Commission
Malaysia January 28, 1963 Malaysian-American Commission on Educational Exchange
New Zealand September 14, 1948 New Zealand-United States Educational Foundation
The
Philippines
March 23, 1948 The Philippine-American Educational Foundation
Taiwan November 30, 195735 Foundation for Scholarly-Exchange Thailand July 1, 1950 Thailand-U.S. Educational Foundation
Note. Adapted from 2017 Annual Report, by J. William Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board (FFSB), 2018, pp32-33.
As reported in 2017 by the FFSB, the current active Fulbright Commissions in EAP, the official names of the organization, and the founding years are listed in Table 5.1. (FFSB, 2018, pp. 31-32) Note, there is an asterisk (*) marked on Taiwan which states, in a tiny font,
“The United States recognizes the Government of the People’s Republic of China as the sole legal government of China. Within this context, the United States maintains unofficial relations with the people of Taiwan.” Also, the date of the agreement signed with Taiwan government is the date of amendment of 1947 Agreement, the 1957 exchanged of letters. If we compared this to the date of agreement signed with South Korea, there is a striking
35 The date of signed agreement varies in the BFS annual reports, three versions were found between 1965 to 1981: Nov. 10, 1947 (1965, 1978), Nov. 1947 (1977), and April 23, 1964 (1981). Furthermore, since late 1977, the annual report began to add a note on the Taiwan program and wording varies too. I also found different dates in the BFS annual reports, at least.
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contrast. In the table, the Korean agreement is dated from the first signing of an agreement, not the signed date of the amendment to re-activate and actually to establish the Fulbright Commission in Korea. One can speculate why there is a different arrangement for a fairly similar situation in the case of Taiwan.
Besides, after the Fulbright-Hays Act was passed in 1961, all Fulbright’s binational
agreements were renewed accordingly. They are the legal charters that determine the current commissions’ operations. In Taiwan’s case, the “new” agreement was signed in 1964 as the basis of the current commission, the Foundation for Scholarly Exchange (FSE).
The other 20 Fulbright programs in this region are under the auspices of U.S. Embassies.
These ‘embassy-based’ programs are operated without binational agreements or binational commissions and without revenues from the sale of wartime or agricultural surpluses. The current active embassy-based programs, as of July 2020, are in the following countries and areas (alphabetically): Brunei, Burma (Myanmar), Cambodia, China, Fiji, Hong Kong, Kiribati, Laos, Macau, Mongolia, Nauru, Papua New Guinea, Samoa, Singapore, Solomon Islands, Timor-Leste, Tonga, Tuvalu, Vanuatu, and Vietnam. (ECA, The Fulbright Program) Table 5.2
Fulbright Grants 1949-2016
Region36 Foreign U.S. Total
Africa 12,541 5,886 18,427
East Asia and the Pacific (EAP) 31,917 18,848 50,765
Europe 136,154 86,677 222,831
Near East Asia 12,399 5,726 18,125
South and Central Asia 13,934 6,870 20,804
Western Hemisphere 39,764 16,837 56,601
Totals 246,709 140,844 387,553
Note. Sourced from 2017 Annual Report: Fulbright by the Numbers, by J. William Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board (FFSB), 2018.
36 There is a different category of regions in ECA website. As of July 2020, ECA website shows Fulbright Programs in six regions, they are: East Asia and the Pacific, Europe and Eurasia, Middle East and North Africa, South and Central Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa, and Western Hemisphere.
https://eca.state.gov/fulbright/fulbright-programs/program-details-country
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According to FFSB 2017 annual report, from 1949 to 2016, a total of 50,765 U.S. and foreign nationals received the Fulbright grants of exchange in this region; while there were 387,553 grantees worldwide. In comparison, as in Table 5.2, the exchange with European (EUR) was composed of 222,831 grantees, near sixty percent (57%) of the grants, followed by the Western Hemisphere (WHA) region accounting for 56,601 grantees (15%), EAP 50,765 grantees (13%), South and Central Asia (SCA) 20,804 grantees (5%), Africa 18,427 (4.8%), Near East Asia (NEA) 18,125 (4.7%). Combining EAP, SCA and NEA, the exchange with all of Asia composed 23% of grantees; and as claimed, the Fulbright Program was the biggest attempt of U.S. government exchange outside the west. (FFSB, 2018) Before that, most exchanges were limited within the western world, except for the Boxer Indemnity
Scholarships. Senator Fulbright, himself, was always focused on Europe, not Asia. A little more than one-third (36%) of grantees are Americans in total, and to all regions.
Table 5.3
Number of Grantees by Countries in EAP Region, 1949-2016
Country Foreign
nationals U.S. Ratio of
Foreign/U.S. Total
Australia 2,965 2,255 1.31 5,220
Indonesia 3,306 1,149 2.88 4,455
Japan 7,571 2,643 2.86 10,21437
South Korea 2,955 2,842 0.95 5,797
Malaysia 1,054 1,105 1.30 2,159
New Zealand 1,752 1,342 2.79 3,094
The Philippines 2,525 905 1.04 3,430
Taiwan 1,648 1,344 1.23 2,992
Thailand 1,939 980 1.98 2,919
Embassy-based 6,202 4,283 1.45 10,485
Total 31,917 18,848 1.70 50,765
Note. Sourced from 2017 Annual Report: Fulbright by the Numbers, by J. William Fulbright Foreign
Note. Sourced from 2017 Annual Report: Fulbright by the Numbers, by J. William Fulbright Foreign