Who Benefits from Taiwan’s Mass Higher Education?

Abstract

Like many countries in the world, the objectives of expanding higher education in Taiwan are proposed to enhance the capacity of professional human resources for national development and personal fulfillment. Nevertheless, the unexpected results from the expansion of higher education since the mid-1990s in fact have created concerns over the issue of educational opportunity and quality. Such problems include the increasingly uneven allocation of resources and tuition discrepancy between public and private universities. The growing concentration of resources for elite groups and a few leading public universities, at the expense of social equity, have facilitated a class reproduction in higher education. While more and more students gain access to higher education, their institutional teaching quality and learning environment still falls behind that of their elite counterparts. This chapter questions why Taiwan’s focus on the expansion of university enrollments has not benefited minority groups and students with disadvantaged social background.