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Universities in Taiwan as a state apparatus¡GA viewpoint of political economy

The embryo of higher education starts from medieval era. Along with the Renaissance, and Enlightenment, the domain knowledge in higher education comprises theology, philosophy and science. It is the most distinguish character in contemporary capitalism States that science and technology gradually becomes the leading productivity engine. The core competence of science and technology exists in the research and development (R&D) capability. Once the higher education involves in the development of science and technology, the State naturally regards it as one of key production elements.
This essay is based on the theory of production relationship, studying the interaction between economy (infrastructure) and ideology (politics and education), and taking the evolution of higher education in Post-war Taiwan as an example. Here we called higher education in Taiwan in the period of 1954 to 1980 as Dominant State Apparatus. During this period the State practiced nationalism through elite politics and technocratic. In 50s and 60s, the State emphasized the political stability, so the ideology was one of the standards for selecting freshmen into higher education. In 60s to 80s, leaded by Council for Economic Planning and Development, the State adjusted the rate of higher education attainment and adjusted the proportion of different colleges/ departments in higher education according to the rational economic value. A report of manpower development by Council for Economic Planning and Development is encouraging a steady rise in the area of science, medicine, agriculture, and engineering, so called natural science in higher education. And the neglect of social science, Liberal Arts is resulted.
From 80s, the higher education in Taiwan remains instrumentality, which is called Latent State Apparatus here. The higher education follows the State¡¦s strategic industry and technology policy accordingly. The State enforces higher education to develop some particular research areas by giving subsidiary. In this knowledge-based economy era, knowledge commercialized and education industrialized is going to be main trends. It is predictable that higher education would allocate its major resources in research areas, which can yield most economic value. At that moment, Higher Education would become not only the State Apparatus, but also Market Apparatus.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:NSYSU/oai:NSYSU:etd-0807103-163143
Date07 August 2003
CreatorsChou, Wei-Tung
ContributorsHwang Gin-Chuan, Tseng Yi-Jen, Cheng Ying-Yao
PublisherNSYSU
Source SetsNSYSU Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Archive
LanguageCholon
Detected LanguageEnglish
Typetext
Formatapplication/pdf
Sourcehttp://etd.lib.nsysu.edu.tw/ETD-db/ETD-search/view_etd?URN=etd-0807103-163143
Rightsunrestricted, Copyright information available at source archive

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