Deepak Kumar Jha reports from Taipei about many attractive features besides the Universiadde 2017 for sports lovers and where the education equals fun
If you are the one who craves for learning plus adventures simultaneously, then Taiwan is the deserving place with World class education infrastructure and exotic locales and cuisine in this heart-shaped beautiful island. More significantly for the Indian students some of the best technical and higher education universities here are cheaper than the private universities in India. Above all it is just a six hours flight from New Delhi and is also connected from other metropolitans of India.
What also make it a perfect foreign study is its seafaring culture and the all-embracing tolerance of an immigrant society, a sweeping global outlook besides being ranked the safest country to secure a better environment for higher education.
Nonetheless, 46 universities have formal cooperative agreements and regular interactions with universities overseas and the majority of universities require all under-graduates to pass English language testing and more and more courses are now taught in foreign languages particularly in English. Which means the mental block that one will have to first study Chinese language (Mandarin) is a things of past in this every bit and space of technology driven country.
For sports lovers, Taipei will also host the 2017 Summer Universiadde, the second largest multi sport competition after the Olympics.
According to Ministry of Education (MoE) the number of international exchange students has grown up by 115 per cent in the last five years and the number of degree students has grown by 83 per cent. “Currently there are about 33,000 students from over 135 countries including around 1143 from India,” says Julie Chiu, education counselor at Department of International and Cross-strait Education, MoE.
“The country’s successful high-tech sector continues to motivate the majority of university students to major in science and technology. The last few years have also seen a slight growth in interest in the arts, humanities and social sciences,” said Dr Deng-Ker lee, professor at Department of Diplomacy and Director at Centre for India Studies College of International Affairs at the prestigious National Chengchi University.
International students may encounter difficulties dealing with various matters in a completely different cultural environment but the MoE and the universities and colleges together have made available many resources towards helping overseas students deepen their understanding of Taiwan and acclimatise culturally, so that they can enjoy their studies in the exotic island.
In recent years the Government has also strongly invested in industry-academia relationship collaboration and relaxed the regulations governing overseas students’ internship in Taiwan in order to attract outstanding students to stay in Taiwan after they graduate. Due to this, more than 5000 Indians are placed and employed at best of the establishments and Industry across the country.
“I came here to study management and got placed and have been staying here for the past five years,” says leo Antony, employed in the sales division of international tyre brand Maxxis in Taiwan. leo, who hails from Chennai (India) has just been given the task to represent the company in its upcoming manufacturing unit in Sanad in Gujarat which would be part of Make in India initiative of Maxxis Tyres.
To promote and to host students from India, Government of Taiwan has been offering scholarships to Indian students and conducting Higher Education Expositions across cities in India.
“last month, 12 prestigious institutes participated in Mumbai for students to retrieve first-hand information, counseling, explore departments and programmes besides about multitudinous scholarship opportunities and internship offers,” said Wei-Chung Wang, senior advisor for Global Affairs, Office of the President of Taiwan and a Professor of Mechanical Engineering at National Tsing Hua University (NTHU) situated in Hsinchu province which is about 95 kilometers from Taipei.
Kalpana Senthamarikannan, hailing from Puducherry (India) points out that for Indian students it is quite affordable with reasonable living cost as compared to the education cost and quality both in Western countries. “Since this country is very close to India and provides fascinating education with accepted culture, this place and university was the obvious choice,” said Kalpana who is pursuing a PhD in social network at NTHU.
Another student luis Valenzuela, hailing from El Salvador studying at National Taiwan Ocean University claimed that this country was on his wish list because here education equals fun and technology is always ahead.