Ranking discourse on quality assurance of higher education funding allocation in Taiwan: A coloniality perspective

• In Event: Comparative Studies of Educational Policy: Examples from Hong Kong, Mainland China, and South Korea

Proposal

The popularity of global university rankings (GURs), which are designed to represent the perceived prestige and quality of universities, have facilitated transformative policy trajectories in many East Asian countries and regions. In Taiwan, the prevalent trend of internationalization has facilitated the transformation of higher education governance and policy change under the entrenched neoliberal ideology. However, it is noteworthy that Taiwan has its unique higher education model that restricts universities from operating with market logic. For one thing, the Taiwanese higher education system is centralized and is primarily controlled by the central government. The institutional missions of universities are primarily aligned with the central policies to serve the government's interest. For another, according to Taiwan’s 2005 Revised University Act (MOE, 2019; Hou et al., 2020), the tuition fee of both public and private higher education institutions is regulated by the Ministry of Education (MOE) of Taiwan. Universities are not allowed to charge higher tuition fees from students, especially international students, as important revenue resources (Lo, 2013). With such restrictions, universities are mostly relying on governmental funding to support their finance.
Several studies have indicated that rankings have a significant impact on the allocation of financial resources in higher education (Komotar, 2019; Hou, 2011). University rankings are increasingly affecting discourses on quality assurance of higher education in Taiwan. In 2005, the Higher Education Evaluation and Accreditation Council of Taiwan (HEEACT) was established to support the task of cross-border higher education quality assurance (Hou, 2014). The HEEACT was commissioned officially to conduct various quality assessment projects of higher education, including quality assurance, accreditation, evaluation, and university rankings (Hou, 2011). Notably, there is a high level of correlation between university rankings and governmental funding allocation among the institutions. On the one hand, the Taiwanese government adopted both global and national rankings projects as an evaluation mechanism for funding allocation (Lo, 2013). Therefore, to compete for more governmental funding, universities are using the performance indicators of the rankings as criteria for improvement and changing institutional practices to respond to the rankings. On the other hand, the HEEACT annual report has found that there is a high correlation between ranking and funding allocation. In other words, the more funding the institution received, the higher its ranking will be (HEEACT, 2011; Hou, 2011). As a result, the ranking discourses have been inevitably reinforced within the quality assurance in higher education policies in Taiwan.
Methodologically, this study uses critical policy analysis (CPA) and draws on Mignolo’s (2003) coloniality perspective to critically examine the ranking discourses on quality assurance of higher education budget allocation in Taiwan. I look at three significant higher education policies: Development Plan for World Class Universities and Research Centers of Excellence (2005-2010), Aim for Top University Project (2011-2017), and Higher Education Sprout Project (2018 to date). All three policies aim to launch special initiatives for regionally selective universities to improve their performance in global university rankings, as well as to improve the international research capacity of Taiwanese universities to pursue “world-class” status. There are two research questions I propose to address in this study: (1) How does the concept of quality assurance have been conceptualized by three significant higher education policies in Taiwan? (2) How does the Taiwanese government use rankings as a tool of quality assurance for the allocation of university funding?
The CPA defines policy as the practice of power and governance, which helps to illuminate how power operates through policy and influences the way we conceptualize quality assurance in higher education (Khorsandi Taskoh, 2014). I use CPA to critically examine the embedded logic of coloniality in three significant higher education policies, which have naturalized and legitimized the superior position of the knowledge economies and higher education models of the Global North through the entrenched ranking discourses (Stack & Mazawi, 2021).
Theoretically, I use Mignolo’s (2003) theory of coloniality to reflect on the conceptualization of quality assurance within the existing policy discourses in Taiwan. Coloniality refers to the “history of power” (Quijano, 2007, p.168), the ongoing logic of dominance, dispossession, and colonialism of the mind (Andreotti, 2015). A coloniality perspective helps to unpack the continuous epistemological domination of the Western model of higher education and knowledge production across geographical spaces and institutional sites (Stack & Mazawi, 2021).
By bringing light to a coloniality perspective, I found that the rationale of quality assurance being conceptualized in existing higher education policies has been driven by the “world-class” imaginary of global higher education. Notably, university rankings have played an influential role in guiding governmental policies regarding funding allocation. For example, during the first evaluation cycle (i.e. 2018-2022) of the Higher Education Sprout Project, 33 public universities, 15 public colleges, and polytechnic universities, 37 private universities, and 65 private colleges and polytechnic universities were eligible for the subsidy (MOE, 2018, February 13). However, the gap in subsidies was very significant between institutions. The top five subsidized public universities received more than $6.5 billion New Taiwanese Dollars (more than 70% of the funds), yet the remaining hundreds of institutions are allocated less than 30% of the total funds. Noteworthily, the top five funding “winners” are research-intensive, nationally selective, and higher-ranked with STEM-specialties institutions (MOE, 2018, February 13). Against this context, with the increasing pressure that rankings have brought to universities in Taiwan, I would argue that the connotation of higher education quality assurance has naturalized the logic of coloniality within governmental policies to retain the privileged status of the Western-dominated higher education model. In this case, rankings need to be considered as a powerful epistemic tool, by which rankings produce and reproduce discourses of “being world-class” to mobilize policies and institutional practices.
I take a novel theoretical approach to examine the complexities and contradictions in existing higher education policies to seek the possibilities of policy decolonization and transformation in Taiwan. The expected contribution of this study is to open a window for unpacking how the connotation of quality assurance in Taiwanese higher education has been conceptualized within the entrenched ranking discourses under conditions of ongoing coloniality logic.

Author

• Jingwun Liang, The University of Western Ontario