Private colleges in Taiwan suffer financial difficulties

TAIPEI - The faculty of private colleges in Taiwan earn much less than their counterparts in public institutions due to their employers facing financial difficulties, according to the island's education department.

A large number of professors at private colleges only earn about half of their counterparts at public colleges earn, Sunday's United Daily News reported, quoting statistics from the education department.

The faculty of Ta Hwa University of Science and Technology, based in Hsinchu county of northern Taiwan, is paid the least. A professor at the college only earns about NT$52,000 (about $1,733) a month, half of the average monthly salary of their counterparts in public universities.

Since August 2019, six private colleges have reduced their faculty's salaries, two of which have cut salaries by 40 percent.

A recent survey made by Taiwan's Union of Private School Educators on 54 private schools and colleges also found that 35 percent of the respondents could not afford to pay their faculty year-end bonus and 42.6 percent paid substandard bonuses.

Educators attributed their financial problems to the shrinking number of students due to the low birth rate in Taiwan but some also argued that irrational expansion of colleges worsened the situation.

The population of Taiwan increased slightly in 2019 by 0.06 per thousand, with a total of 176,296 deaths and 177,767 newborns. The number of people between the ages of 18 to 21 is estimated to drop from 1.18 million in 2018 to 500,000 in 2065, according to the island's authorities.