Taiwan's Higher Education Expansion and Decline: From 58 Universities to 140, Then Closures Begin

30-Second Overview: In 1994, Taiwan had 58 universities and colleges. After the Education Reform Committee's call to "establish more high schools and universities," the government encouraged private investment in higher education and shifted the founding process from a "ratification system" to a "reporting system." Within a decade, university numbers nearly tripled; by 2017 the peak stood at 129 universities plus colleges, totaling 144 institutions. Private universities expanded from 26 to 94 schools, reaching 67% of the total. But in 2022, Taiwan's newborn count fell to 138,986 — a historic low in 47 years of records — with a birth rate of 1.08, the lowest in the world. The university "market" is shrinking rapidly, and private universities are beginning to close. Critical pedagogy researchers have argued that this cycle of "too few" to "too many" to "closing doors" is rooted in education reform that, from the start, was driven by a neoliberal market logic — pushing higher education from public good toward commodity.¹

"Widespread University Expansion": An Education Policy Driven by an Economics Vocabulary Word

On April 10, 1994, the "410 Education Reform Alliance" (四一〇教育改造聯盟) marched in protest, with one of its four demands being "widespread establishment of high schools and universities." That September, the Executive Yuan established the "Education Reform Advisory Committee" (教改會, Education Reform Committee), chaired by Nobel laureate Lee Yuan-tseh (李遠哲).¹

In the advisory reports the committee published over the following two years, the direction of higher education reform can be distilled into a single word borrowed from economics: "deregulation" (鬆綁). The First Advisory Report stated: "The government's excessive regulation of education remains the biggest, widest, and deepest factor impeding the modernization of education." The committee argued that government should step back from the role of administrator and instead become a resource provider, allowing "the education market to have ample room for choice."²

The Fourth Advisory Report put it more concretely: "The current moratorium on establishing new public universities and colleges… the quantitative expansion of higher education should primarily utilize private resources. For the establishment of private schools, the 'ratification system' (核定制) shall be changed to a 'reporting system' (報備制)."² This statement was plain: government would exit the role of building universities, and would instead encourage private parties to do so.

Huang Wu-hsiung (黃武雄), a leading figure in the 410 Alliance, pointed out as early as 1996: "The choice of education reform direction is, in its essence, a matter of ideology."³ Critical pedagogy scholars later argued that the Education Reform Committee's members were from the outset deeply influenced by neoliberal thinking, and that the reform policy centered on "deregulation" effectively legitimized academic capitalism and new public managerialism.¹

Ten Years, Three Times the Size: The Structural Changes Behind the Numbers

Once the committee's proposals became policy, the numbers exploded.

Based on data from the Republic of China Education Statistics (中華民國教育統計) across multiple years and the Ministry of Education's Seventh Republic of China Education Yearbook (2012),¹⁴ Taiwan's university and college count changed as follows:

In the decade from 1994 to 2004, university and college numbers surged from 58 to 145. Private schools showed the most dramatic growth: private universities went from 8 to 41, private colleges from 18 to 53. Independent colleges and junior colleges upgrading their status were the main engine of this expansion.¹

Net enrollment rate shifts were equally dramatic. The 1994 academic year stood at 26.26%; five years later in 1999 it climbed to 35.43%; by 2004 it exceeded 53.2%; by 2020 it reached 72.10% — 2.75 times the 1994 figure.¹ Using education sociologist Trow's (2006) classification system, Taiwan completed the transition from "elite" to "universal" higher education in less than twenty years.

Competitive Funding: An Arms Race Among Universities

As university numbers exploded, government education funding didn't grow proportionately. The Ministry of Education's solution: use "competition" to allocate resources.

From the 2002 "Research University Integration Promotion Plan," to the 2005 "Teaching Excellence in Universities Program," to the 2006 "Program to Develop Top-notch Universities and Research Centers," to the 2011 "Aiming for the Top University Project" — Taiwan's higher education funding allocation moved increasingly toward a competitive market model.¹

The Ministry of Education explicitly stated in its "Program to Develop Top-notch Universities and Research Centers" that past equal-distribution funding had left universities lacking competition and evaluation mechanisms, resulting in limited resources being spread too thin. It therefore allocated NT$50 billion, in five-year phases, to subsidize key universities and promote international competitiveness.¹

In 2017, the Ministry consolidated multiple competitive programs into the "Higher Education Sprout Project" (高等教育深耕計畫), covering both higher education and vocational systems in five-year phases. Though the program lists "university social responsibility" as one of its aims, critics question whether public interest and local connection may be diluted by a market competition narrative within a performance metrics framework.⁵

Jessop (2017) argued that academic capitalism leads to universities "acting more like competing entrepreneurial firms seeking to maximize reputation and revenues than as selfless, public-spirited institutions."¹ Competitive funding of this type has a substantial impact on Taiwan's universities, directly causing stratification: those receiving subsidies are labeled "world-class" and "top universities," while the rest struggle in resource scarcity.

University Incorporation: An Incomplete Experiment

Alongside competitive funding, another attempt at marketization was university incorporation.

The Education Reform Committee's General Advisory Report on Education Reform recommended that "public universities may in the future be planned in the direction of incorporation," and that the University Act should be amended through legally prescribed procedures.² The Ministry of Education organized a "Incorporated National Universities" task force in 2000, hoping to grant universities operational autonomy — personnel and financial independence — through mechanisms such as establishing boards of directors for public universities.¹

But when the University Act amendment was reviewed in 2005, the incorporation chapter was not included for deliberation. Opposition rested on two main grounds: first, university "independence" would mean shouldering funding pressure and might lead to "ignoring or closing unpopular departments or fundamental research due to consideration of operating costs or economic benefits"; second, incorporated administrative structures and management frameworks might thoroughly damage academic autonomy and academic freedom.¹

Japan's experience offers a cautionary tale. Japan began implementing national university incorporation in 2004, stemming from a policy direction of cutting government budgets under fiscal difficulties in the 1990s. Making national university faculty members "non-civil servants" was listed as the primary goal, and the subsequent pressures on universities' autonomous funding and operational adjustments have been the subject of widespread ongoing debate.⁶

Low Birthrates: The Final Reckoning

All expansions have an end. Taiwan's came faster than expected.

In 2022, Taiwan's newborn count was only 138,986 — the historic low in 47 years of records. The 2021 figure was even more striking: only 153,820 newborns, falling below 160,000 for the first time, with a birth rate of 1.08 — the lowest in the world.¹

The university "market's" enrollment population is shrinking. Private universities bear the brunt, facing insufficient enrollment, forced to reduce admissions, adjust or close departments, restructure or merge, and sometimes even halt enrollment and close entirely.⁷ The Ministry of Education published the Private Senior Secondary and Higher Education Institution Exit Regulations (私立高級中等以上學校退場條例) in 2022, providing the legal basis for proactive administration of exit mechanisms.

But closures are only half the problem. The other half is a large surplus of faculty: opportunities for doctoral graduates to enter higher education institutions are diminishing, while the number of high-level personnel with master's or doctoral degrees is expanding — yet so is their unemployment risk.¹ University teachers are gradually shifting from tenure-track positions to project positions and adjunct positions — called "wandering professors." Lorenz (2012) noted that in the United States, nearly two-thirds of teaching is now performed by non-tenure-track teachers under increasingly worsening conditions.¹

Higher Education as Public Good or Market Commodity?

Back to the most fundamental question.

The Education Reform Committee's reports occasionally contained warnings about possible hazards of marketization. For instance, the First Advisory Report noted: "In the 'education market' of free competition, while inferior educational products will be weeded out, the damage done to disadvantaged recipients of education is something that social justice cannot accept."² But these warnings were submerged in a flood of market-oriented discourse and never translated into concrete protective measures.

Critical pedagogy scholar Giroux (2002) argued: "Faced with the threat of neoliberalism, we must reflect on the fact that 'higher education's position lies not in the services it provides but in the values it represents' — a pursuit of justice, freedom, and equality."⁸

And the report General Education in a Free Society, published by Harvard University President Conant in 1945 after a twenty-year tenure, still rings out resonantly eighty years later: "The university is a garden for exploring knowledge, not a vocational training center."¹

Taiwan's higher education, within thirty years, completed a full cycle: from "too few people can attend university" to "nearly everyone can attend university" to "universities starting to close." The biggest legacy this cycle has left may be a question that society has still not seriously answered: is education a public right that every person should enjoy, or a commodity whose supply and demand should be regulated by market mechanisms?

The different answer determines what Taiwan's universities will grow into over the next thirty years.

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