To Borrow or to Mix? A Cultural Approach to Observing Taiwanese Higher Education

Abstract

This paper observes higher education development in Taiwan, a society with values and traditions from multiple origins. While most East Asian societies have achieved highly in socio-economic development, their historical roots and development approaches have led to some clear diversity in higher education development. The Taiwanese higher education system has intentionally been designed to follow the Western model, the values and traditions embraced in the society still play a significant role in its development. The society has undergone social, political, economic and cultural changes in over the past two centuries. In its higher education development, there are observable aspects of the policies and practices that echo the models from the West. Underneath the surface, however, various unseen facets reflect its deeply rooted values and heritages of the society. While Western models have long been dominant in Taiwanese higher education, there has been a constant tension result fundamentally from the striking differences in value orientation between traditional understandings of higher education and the great influences from the West. Although such incompatibility of values seems to be widespread across East Asian higher education systems, there have been few studies from a cultural perspective to understand the phenomenon. This paper attempts to investigate the development of higher education system in Taiwan through a cultural lens. In particular, it examines the interplay of various forces in the existing system that has received much influence from the West, the cultural values derived from the Chinese origin, and the Japanese colonial and postcolonial regimes. Adopting a case study research approach, in-depth semi-structured interviews with selected administrators and academics from two elite universities in Taiwan were conducted. The empirical data reflect the interstates of collision and assimilation between the East Asian and Western elements. This paper intends to explore emerging themes derived from data analysis concerning the fundamentals that play essential roles in the process of higher education development in Taiwan. It aims to illuminate further understanding of how Taiwanese higher education has well undertaken such changes through the exhausting process of borrowing and mixing. By so doing, it hopes to shed light on some key issues in the development of higher education across East Asian societies.