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Just like the “Taishang” (Taiwanese businessmen and expatriates) who migrated west to China to look for opportunities, the sight of Taiwanese academics taking teaching jobs across the Strait is not noteworthy in of itself. But recently, collapsing enrollment rates in Taiwanese universities have given rise to a disturbing new development. Taiwanese academics are not being seduced to go west by high-paying jobs or golden tickets. The new Taiwanese academic diaspora may be an act of desperation.

In the last days of July, the Nan Jeon University of Science and Technology (南榮科技大學) in Tainan’s Yanshuei District (鹽水) became the fifth scholastic domino to succumb to the consequences of Taiwan’s sub-replacement fertility rate. It announced it will close its doors in February 2020—just shy of its 55th anniversary.

At the public conference to explain how students can transfer to other schools and continue their studies, the scene is understandably chaotic. Frightened and exasperated parents argue their children should be allowed to finish their diplomas before the school shuts down. Another group of angry adults gathers at the entrance to wave banners in protest—these are the faculty members of Nan Jeon, whose futures are similarly in jeopardy.

This unhappy scene may yet repeat itself on other campuses across the nation. When asked about his plans for the future, a Professor Shen from the Department of Business Administration heaves a weary sigh. “Friends told me they’re hiring in Mainland China. Some colleagues and I are planning to go check it out.”

Nan Jeon has not been able to pay its academic staff since May of this year. Shen has been working pro bono for the past three months, but forty of the university’s one hundred teachers have already left in search of greener pastures. Shen heard seven of them found new teaching positions in China.

Around the same time, Chen Cheng-liang (陳政亮), secretary-general of the Taiwan Higher Education Union (高教工會), published a bombshell on Facebook. It was an open recruitment letter from a Chinese school to faculty at multiple private universities across Taiwan. The sales pitch contained this line: “Why not come work at our rapidly growing academy? Here, you’ll never have to worry about low enrollment, or working part-time to make ends meet, or the consequence of declining birth rates.”

This single sentence cut Taiwanese teachers to the quick. It’s an accurate assessment of the problem plaguing Taiwan’s higher education system. To a certain degree, it also reminds Taiwan’s struggling teachers that things don’t have to be this way. (Read: My University Has Disappeared!)

Teachers Are Not Salesmen

“Back when I worked in Taiwan, colleagues chatted about which school to visit to attract enrollees. We tried to make light of our situation—professors behaving like door-to-door salesmen!” Professor Hsieh taught part-time at a private university in Taiwan; he now works at a healthcare college in Fujian Province. “Most of us are here as a last resort, but it does feel good not to have to help recruit new enrollees.”

“Teachers in northern Taiwan can’t imagine our ordeal: having to visit students in the evening and beg them to enroll.” Professor Yang used to teach in the department of design at a now-defunct university. “Now I teach at an international business academy in Fujian. I don’t have to attract enrollees or even do administrative work. I can focus on teaching and research, and my classes are all the better for it,” he says with a sigh.

Professor Lin went from working at Mingdao University (明道大學) in Chunghua County to a Chinese university in Zhejiang Province. His specialty is management. “In fact, I have more time now to write dissertations. In four years, I wrote seventy-two pieces, some of which were published in very respectable journals. I could never have found time to do so while working in Taiwan.”

Dropping fertility rates have plummeted many private universities into an enrollment freefall. Teachers are tasked with attracting enrollees, so the quality of their academic work suffers as a result. Not a few of them have begun contemplating going west. (Read: Ming-Tang Huang/CW)

Five years ago, Lin’s predecessor foresaw what declining birth rates would do to Taiwan’s higher education and coaxed him to “go West, young man”. He is fortunate to have heeded that advice. “People who moved to China in the last two years came late to the party. Their benefits aren’t as good,” says Lin.

“China doesn’t even have to pay too much, they just need to treat us like human beings for us to cross over,” Lin Po-yi (林伯儀) says sarcastically. He is head of the Taiwan Higher Education Union’s organization department. A college professor is not hired to attract enrollees or do administrative work. Yet, as smaller private universities struggle to survive the impact of low fertility rates, more and more faculty members find themselves having to shoulder these additional burdens.

“Teachers from private universities are haunted by the specter of midlife unemployment. China offers them a way out, so how can they refuse? It’s certainly becoming a trend. I know people from Nan Jeon, APIC (亞太), and Tajen (大仁) who’ve migrated across the Strait,” says Yu Jung-hui (尤榮輝), president of the Union of Private School Educators (私校工會).

As of right now, there are no official statistics on how many academics have gone to work in China. Michael J. K. Chen (陳振貴), president of Shih Chien University (實踐大學), speaks from his long experience of working intimately with Chinese academics. He says, “The latest figure from the Mainland Affairs Council is there are four hundred Taiwanese PhDs going to China annually. Last year, China rolled out the ‘31 Incentives’ to attract Taiwanese talent. If you look back at earlier policies, such as ‘three middles and the youth’ (三中一青), ‘one generation and one stratum’ (一代一線), and also their assimilation policy…you’ll realize China made a move on Taiwan long, long ago.”

Chen goes on to say four hundred is a conservative guess; he thinks the actual number is closer to a thousand. It sounds about right. As more and more Taiwanese universities quit the game, this higher estimate becomes more reflective of the statistics reported by the Taiwan Higher Education Union, not to mention the number of teachers in the “Taiwanese teachers in China” mail group.

From Guest of Honor to Beggar at the Door

Of course, China has always been eager to attract talent from Taiwan, and Taiwanese scholars have migrated across the Strait before. But the enrollment crash in Taiwan’s higher education system has led to a disturbing new development. Academics are not being seduced to go to China by massive pay increases like before. The new diaspora is an act of desperation.

The consensus among Taiwanese teachers is the average entry-level salary offered by Chinese schools is just a bit better than what they got back home. “They are holding all the cards, we’re in no position to bargain!” says Yu of the Union of Private School Educators. “Taiwanese teachers who go to China because their old schools closed are easily replaceable. They can’t expect any frills; they’re lucky if there’s no pay cut.”

The latest wave of Taiwanese teachers going west is unique in history. They’re not jumping ship to swim after better pay. They’re grasping at straws because their old schools went out of business. (Source: Shutterstock)

In Taiwan, an assistant professor makes around 900,000 Taiwan dollars a year (about 30,000 US dollars). But according to Professor Yang, who went to teach at an international business academy in Fujian, “Because you’re a fresh face, a new PhD graduate is only paid 180,000 renminbi—which is less than 900,000 Taiwan dollars.” Professor Hsieh, who teaches bioengineering, also says, “People dream of two or three times their original salary, but that’s simply not possible anymore. You need to decide for yourself whether it’s worth turning your back on home and country.”

The workload is also heavier than before. Taiwanese scholars are invited to teach as “guest speakers”. There are strict requirements about the quantity and quality of papers they produce. They’re also tasked with training students to participate in international competitions and bring home medals for the school. “I knew a teacher who was asked to produce three SCI-grade papers a year or face termination,” says President Chen.

Professor Lin, who teaches management in Zhejiang, just returned from escorting students to an entrepreneurship and innovation competition in Hangzhou. He agrees the work has become much more challenging.

With too many mouths to feed but too few resources to go around, Taiwanese teachers have gone from being welcomed as honored guests to being treated like hungry beggars clamoring at the door. Competition will only get stiffer. Though they’ve left home and hearth to escape the undertow of low enrollment, these teachers are not out of the woods yet.

What’s more, it’s not enough to be a good scholar to secure a spot in China. Of all the teachers flocking west to seek out new jobs, only a few will find shelter. The barrier is less about academic accomplishment and more about whether you know the right people.

“Open hiring is becoming rare. Lots of teachers are in China because they have connections,” says Lin Po-yi. “You need to be on good terms with senior management if you want to have a shot. We see lots of private university professors who used to complain about their presidents now brown-nosing like there’s no tomorrow.” However, flagrant nepotism results in truly capable people being left out in the cold.

Even Science Teachers Aren’t Safe from the Thought Police

Taiwanese academics who work in China face not only escalating competition and unchecked nepotism, but also their old enemy—China’s ever-present thought police. Especially in the liberal arts, recent cross-strait tensions have resulted in Taiwanese teachers being monitored more closely than before.

A renowned Chinese professor describes the situation thusly: “There’s a camera pointed at the teacher in every classroom. Utter the wrong syllable and you’re out of a job.” Scholars are even prohibited from studying the Qing dynasty using the methodology of global history; supposedly, doing so will “divide the Chinese people.”

Professor Yang, who is teaching design in Fujian, says, “In recent years, they’ve tightened the noose of thought control. When I teach, I often ask students to study ‘international’ cases of innovative design. But I must be careful—if I accidentally refer to Taiwan as another nation, I will be in big trouble.”

One practice he really can’t stand is something called “open-door audits” (推門聽課): “Administrators of all levels can barge into my class at any time and plop down in a front row seat to audit me. They don’t even need to knock or speak to me.”

External auditors are not the worst of it. His own students may be members or staff in the Communist Party. “Students monitor you more carefully than anyone else. If they detect just a whiff of impropriety, they are tattling to the Party.” To Yang, the rule of survival is simple: “Abandon all the principles of teaching you learned in Taiwan.” (Read: Professor Flight? '30 Million RMB Can’t Buy Democracy and Academic Freedom')

In recent years, political tension across the Strait has put Taiwanese teachers working in China under more extreme forms of scrutiny. These include installing cameras inside classrooms or administrators barging into class to “audit.” What’s more, Chinese students themselves may be staff or members in the Communist Party. (Source: Shutterstock)

The conflict of values is so great, humanities could never be Taiwan’s main academic export to China. Science and business programs are received with much more warmth. These teachers are also less likely to get into some political kerfuffle. Professor Hsieh, who teachers bioengineering in Fujian, sums it up succinctly: “I’m here to teach, not preach. Everything is fine so long as I do my job and don’t get involved in politics.”

Still, the question of how to get approval for research proposals and secure funding—crucial work for any academic—causes Hsieh to shrug helplessly. “Certainly, it (preferential treatment) is a problem. Which is why our Chinese colleagues often submit the proposals while the Taiwanese work in the background.” Professor Lin, the management expert, also says, “You need to have connections to be handed research projects. Sure, some Taiwanese teachers get them, too, but that’s a matter of ‘luck’.”

Is There a Solution to Taiwan’s Academic Diaspora?

In Taiwan, higher education’s “hunger games” have officially begun due to the sub-replacement fertility rate. “Vagabond teachers” are the natural result of the dwindling number of students. But Lin Po-yi puts forth a different hypothesis: “Back when Taiwan expanded its higher education programs, schools didn’t hire more teachers, they just increased class size. Now there are fewer students, the student-faculty ratio is actually going back to its original balance. There’s no need to lay off teachers.”

The average ratio on college campuses in OECD countries is seventeen students for every teacher. In Taiwan, the ratio is a staggering twenty-six to one. “If the Ministry of Education can provide more resources, students will receive better schooling and teachers won’t have to become vagrants begging for scraps,” concludes Lin.

Yu Jung-hui suggests that excess staff in Taiwan’s higher education system should seek their fortune in Southeast Asia. “China is not known for their liberalism or democracy. Going west will always pose a risk. Better to become part of the government’s ‘New Southbound Policy’ and find another way.” (Read: Southeast Asian Student Enrollment Up 85% in Taiwan)

Whether the solution is increasing government spending or forging a new path overseas, for the time being, teachers from defunct universities will have to find a way to get by. Some returned to the countryside to grow fruits; others left the academic sphere to enter the world of business. However, for most of them, the best answer is still to go west. After all, teachers are not even eligible for unemployment benefits or vocational training under Taiwan’s labor laws.

Professor Yang grew up in Chunghua. He laments, “If I had a choice, of course I’d rather teach in Taiwan. My child is going to high school this year, I want to be close to my family.” But the oversupply of teachers in Taiwan’s higher education market makes it difficult for him to come back, despite often returning home to chase after job interviews. For Yang, the simple wish to teach Taiwanese students and watch his child grow up is a pipe dream.

Throughout history, people have migrated to search for better jobs. But an exodus of scholars who cannot find hope in their own country is a crisis that should not be ignored. Nan Jeon was just the fifth domino to fall; there are many more struggling universities teetering on the brink. And on every campus, there is an unhappy assembly of teachers getting ready to pack their bags, to bid adieu to the land that raised them and the liberal academic environment they helped to foster.

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Translated by Jack C.

Edited by Sharon Tseng