Last month, Tamkang University was granted permission to establish Taiwan’s first ever international long-distance master’s degree program, the Executive Master's Program in Asia Studies. Scheduled to begin in the 2011 academic year, the program will take students from countries in Central and South America that have diplomatic ties with Taiwan, such as Guatemala, Honduras, the Dominican Republic, and others.

The course structure for the newly instituted master’s program will be designed by the Director of the Graduate Institute of Asian Studies, Dr. Samuel Ching-Shan Hu. Dr. Hu explained that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs commissioned Tamkang University to implement the program due to TKU’s renowned distance learning programs.

The program content will focus primarily on the evolving nature of relations and general trends between Taiwan and the rest of Asia. The course quota will be 25 students per year. For the most part, classes will be conducted in English and Chinese, with additional supplementary material offered in Spanish.

Dr. Ching-Fan Chen, the Director of the TKU Distance Education Development Section, said that “TKU has ample experience in providing long-distance education, but this is our first attempt at offering international long-distance education. There are many difficulties to overcome, like technical issues and problems related to time-zone differences which we’ll have to further discuss. But I look forward to it running very smoothly”.