The Dilemma of Female Professors in Social Involvement

Chuing Prudence Chou

Universitiy faculty members are expected to fulfill their roles in teaching, researching and community service, the latter role is even more demanded by the society in large for the sake of public justification, clarification, and the justice defense. Public intellectuals as Edward W. Said (1979) once pointed out that in facing any social conflicts, it is the duty of public intellectuals (including university faculty) to stand for their pursuit of truth and knowledge in the hope of maintaining social justice.

Ironically, Taiwanese professors like their counterparts in the West have busily devoted themselves to earn a living than to fulfill their social role as public intellectuals. Many of them have become less sensitive or even indifferent to expressing themselves over public issues. Along with their silence in the social domain, declines their professional status.

Nevertheless, gender issues in this regard have been ignored and, played a minor role in social discussions. The lack of gender awareness has been the case even in Said’s major books on the role of public intellectuals. It is obvious that women experience a greater barrier in assuming their expected role as public intellectuals and academics owing to exclusion of discussion in literature and practice. In this paper, the author attempted to reviewed some case studies on the dilemma of female intellectuals in social participation.

Key Words: female professor, public intellectual, social involvement, Edward Said  

A Study on the Incorporation of

National Universities in Taiwan

Chuing Prudence Chou

The twenty-first century is the century where knowledge-based economy has formed the core of social development, where universities around the world has become the foundamental base and pawning ground for new knowledge and for human resources. In retrospect, Taiwan's higher education has evolved from elitist teaching to universal education, while suffered from lack of efficiency and social relevancy. Only in recent years, because of rapid social transformations, higher education also faces enormous trials and challenges, leading to the rise of a multitude of social problems and criticism. The call for revising University Law since 2000 has reflected current reform tendencies for restructuring Taiwanese universities, especially the national ones.

Therefore, a proposal has been launched by the government in the past two years to adjust national institutions into public legal persons, in the hope of relaxing national university governance while maintaining greater institutional autonomy.

The current world- wide trend of higher education reform is ongoing as a result of governmental restructuring policies. As part of the reform programs, rationales of the incorporation of national universities has two folds in Great Britain, Germany and Japan: to enhance institutional efficiency on the one hand, and to maintain academic autonomy on the other. However, controversies have never ended over the transformation of national universities, which have been regarded as public goods, into a corporate status which economic efficiency first priority. The recent debates over the Taiwanese University Act drafting containing many items on incorporation of national universities ever easting. The message of the preceding this policy is clear and the attempt is strong in the eyes of administration, but not convincing enough from the university and other parties concerned owing to lack of communication and consensus. It is, thus, studies on this topic is very much needed, including the reform policy-making process, assumption underneath the policy, the infrastructure deployment of the new system, and the feasible evaluation outcomes of this new system in the future.

Key word: National Universities Incorporation Education reform 

A study on the innovation base on

“Chinese university campuses”

Chuing Prudence Chou

The pursuit of quality in a knowledge-based economy is the top priority in the 21^th century. It is even so for many developing countries such as China. According to Hamish Mcrae’s (1996), study the top human traits in 2020 include creativity, quality, motivation, and discipline. Therefore, many school reforms are urged to update their curriculum and instruction in order to meet the needs of the competition within a knowledge-based society. This is especially true at the university level where students are expected creatively to apply their theories and knowledge aquired from the classroom into practice. In recent years, more and more Chinese universities are putting more efforts and resources on improving their students’ creative abilities and performance by setting up many student innovation laboratories, or bases. In this study, three major university innovation application centers are reviewed. Issues discussed in the paper include the origin of the center establishment, daily operation of the programs, the profile of faculty and student involvement, and the evaluation of the program.

Key Words:

Chinese universities, innovation base creativity center.