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[romanworld]

Education Minister Wu Se-hwa said Wednesday that he is happy to see the planned merger between National Yang-Ming University and National Chiao Tung University and believes it could expand their operational scale and enhance their international competitiveness.

Speaking for the first time on the matter during a visit to a technical and vocational college in Taichung, Wu said that a merger of two public universities will only be carried out after careful consideration of its effect on the overall development of higher education in the country.

Wu said that while some universities in Taiwan have strong competitive advantages, their development is constrained by their small size and narrow fields of study. Through mergers, these institutions of higher learning can increase their chances of success in the international arena.

Wu cited the proposed merger between Yang-Ming and Chiao Tung as a good example of the education ministry's "Aim for the Top University Plan" in action, as Yang-Ming has only about 4,000 students, while Chiao Tung has around 10,000 students. Through the merger, the two schools would be able to expand their scale and complement each other's fields of study.

Similarly, if National Cheng Kung University's planned merger with Tainan National University of the Arts could be completed, they would become more competitive.

Another type of merger is seen in the planned pairing of National Tsing Hua University, a comprehensive university in Hsinchu, with National Hsinchu University of Education, a teacher's college, that is expected to help the development of the overall education system in Hsinchu.

http://www.chinapost.com.tw/taiwan/national/national-news/2016/01/07/455458/Education-minister.htm

These mergers are redundant really because the number of students going to university will continue to fall. Notice how the angle of this story shifts the interest away from the impending demographic catastrophe and focuses instead on how Taiwan's universities will "become more competitive". What a joke.