Taiwan looks at India for talent, resource

CHENNAI: The curtain raiser of Taiwan Higher Education Exposition 2017 was held at Hilton Chennai recently. The two-day event was organised by Taiwan Education Centre along with National Tsing Hua University. The event has 20 Taiwanese institutions offering academic/vocational programmes, scholarships and internships.“We want to increase the cultural and academic collaboration between the two countries. We need more Indian students because both countries will benefit from it,” said Lide Yao, deputy minister for education, Taiwan.

“We have over 1,400 Indian students in Taiwan which is a very big number compared to our population. We are proud of the quality of education and promote Indian students as we know the abundance of talent here and want that resource,” said Ambassador Chung Kwang Tien.
Among the institutions, there is also a scholarship programme called ‘Elite Study in Taiwan’ commissioned by the Ministry of Education, which provide grants to graduate and undergraduate students from India and other Southeast Asian countries to do joint research or a research project. It also enables them to pursue masters or doctoral degrees from any of the 78 universities which are a part of the consortium.

“Indian students can directly talk to the university representatives and learn the requirements. Our fee structure is cheaper compared to the west. We are also signing more transfer programmes this year,” said Charles C Li, director general, Taipei Cultural Centre, Chennai.
The event also saw Veltech University signing MoU with seven high ranking universities from Taiwan. “We already have eight universities under our MOU agreement and 50 of our students are in Taiwan. We are hoping to send in 30 more every year from next year,” said Beela Sathyanarayanan, vice chancellor, Veltech University.