The TKU College of Education recently invited David Post, a professor at Penn State University (US), to visit TKU and deliver a special lecture on academic equality. Prof Post has been the editor-in-chief of a prestigious academic journal, the Comparative Education Review, for almost a decade.

The special lecture was held on Feb 20, 2013, at the Tamsui Campus. Its theme, of academic equality, referred not to the age-old problem of unequal access to education, but instead to the trend of placing uneven emphasis on local and international academic journals. The original purpose of academic journals was to provide a platform for exchange in opinion and thought, and thereby enhance the quality of academic research. Yet today, said Post, many scholars view academic journals as a means to an end, a way of gaining funding or securing tenure-based promotion. According to Post, many scholars abandon important local research topics in the hope of being published in international journals. Others avoid local research because of barriers to do with region-specific, technical terms. The result: a chronic dearth in quality local research.

The Dean of TKU’s College of Education, Dr. Dian-Fu Chang, said that all the attending professors gained a lot from the lecture and the subsequent discussion.