The Construction of Academic Excellence and University Responsibility in Taiwan

• In Event: Contested Academic Norms - Unraveling Evaluation Discourses and Practices in an Age of “Excellence”: Globalisation and the Making of Academic Excellence

Abstract

This study aims to elucidate how the discourse of academic excellence has been formalised in Taiwan. Academic excellence has become the main mission of universities in Taiwan, while the content of academic excellence implies publications on high-ranked journals or patents occasionally. When the language of academic excellence is widely used in office presses, mass media and academic journals, it seems like the definition of academic excellence is universal and taken-for-granted. In this study I will prove that there are several changes in ideas of university responsibility and the conception of academic excellence began to link the university responsibility from the 80s. The rise in the emphasis on academic excellence is often considered a part of the globalisation of higher education market. I argue that contextual factors also play a role in the emergence of academic excellence as one of the university responsibility by reviewing historical documents. This research is conducted on the basis of discourse analysis. Materials that I utilised include government's presses (Ministry of Education and Ministry of Science and Technology), and academic series in the discipline of education from the 70s. In summary, along with the globalisation of higher education, domestic issues, like democracy movement, class conflicts and university's autonomy, had been involved in procedures of problematisation of universities. In addition, the successful introduction of new standard for academic excellence is still based on a consensus among various local actors in the sense of ANT instead of just an international movement.

Author

• Ming-Te Peng, Goldsmiths