Two Decades of Educational Expansion in Taiwan: Social Equity Concerned

During the past two decades, Taiwan experienced a movement of expansion of senior secondary education and higher education (the expansion in brief). In the meantime the entrance system of higher education institutions and senior high schools has changed accordingly in response to the open enrollments demands from the public.

One of the causes of the expansion was to achieve social equity in terms of offering more educational opportunities to those students from the disadvantaged groups. However, until 2013 even though the gross enrollment ratio of upper secondary education and tertiary education reached 98.33% and 84.43% separately, those students with disadvantaged background were still left far behind with their counterparts from better family background in terms of educational achievements, such as being admitted into the academic senior high schools and universities with good reputation.

The central argument here is the increase of senior high schools and higher education institutions (HEI) actually enrolled more students from the disadvantaged groups, the differentiation and stratification of senior high schools and HEI in terms of preference and various ability requirements, still made the social equity an unfulfilled dream.

The paper examines the expansion, first through the reveal of the statistical data illustrating the extent of the expansion; then through the investigation of the reform claims proposed since the 1990s; and finally through the collection of the issues resulting from the expansion mentioned above.