The 63rd University Affairs Meeting of TKU was held at Chueh-sheng International Conference Hall on June 4, in which Dr. Pai Ti-ching, Chief, the Educational Evaluation and Development Section, Center for Learning and Teaching, delivered a special speech on the analysis of MOE subsidy directions for private colleges and universities as well as school affairs evaluation. He points out that MOE will subsidize about 2.95 billion to more than 30 private universities in 2010 academic year, and TKU will receive the highest amount of money, 131 million NTD, in the first category of comprehensive universities, which is ranked No. 2 among all the private universities, second only to Feng Chia University.

The subsidy budget from MOE is divided into two parts: 80% is reward funding, and 20% is grants-in-aids. The amount of reward funding is decided by the MOE evaluation committee that examines the budget proposal of the school according to the following five indicators: college or university evaluation result, education features, administrative operation, budget execution and the final achievement. As for grants-in-aids, it is given depending on current school scale and resource. In 2010 academic year, TKU will get around 100 million reward funding and 31 million grants-in-aids, decreasing 3.57 million in total when compared to the subsidy we got last time.

Moreover, Dr. Kang Shung-wen, Dean, Office of Research and Development, points out in his presentation that while MOE places much importance on the indicator of industry-academic cooperation when it evaluates universities for distributing subsidy, our performance in this indicator is just passable. Presently, 73% of TKU’s total financial income comes from tuition and incidental fees paid by students. If we can improve the industry-academic cooperation, entrepreneur alumni are more willing to co-work with their alma mater, which will not only increase the income for the school, but also help graduates to obtain employment more easily, creating a win-win situation. Responding to Dr. Kang’s opinion, President Chang gave instructions to the high officials of the school to better teaching quality and industry-academic cooperation as soon as possible.

In the meeting, President Chang also told the coordinators of the eight divisions to prepare TKU’s 60th anniversary activities with all their strength since it is the most important event next semester. In addition, while preparing the celebrating activities, each college and department should ponder on the issues of teaching, researching, and serving as well to increase TKU’s soft power.

Meanwhile, the result presentation of MOE subsidy execution in 2009 academic year was held at Chueh-sheng International Conference Hall on June 1. Dr. Chang Wen-Shion, President of Jin-Wen University of Science and Technology, and one of the evaluation committee members, indicated that TKU did its utmost to present a complete execution report so that evaluation committee members can check the details more clearly and easily. “TKU has many advantages, and the thing that most impressed us is its full-fledged system and execution ability,” said Dr. Chang.

The other evaluation committee member, Dr. Wu Tieh-hsiung, the Visiting Chair Professor of Chia Nan University of Pharmacy and Science, remarked that TKU should pay much attention to the problem of student-teacher ratio. “Although you still meet the standard set by MOE, your student-teacher ratio may be too high because the student number is increasing while more and more teachers are going to retire,” said Dr. Wu. President Chang explained that even if we are allowed to recruit 50 to 60 new teachers each year, we only enrolled 20 last year for we put quality before quantity. “We will try hard to recruit excellent teachers this year to improve the student-teacher ratio,” said President Chang. ( ~Shu-chun Yen )