New Public Management in Taiwan Higher Education: Are We There Yet?

Proceedings of ‏The 2nd World Conference on Teaching and Education

Year: 2021

DOI: https://www.doi.org/10.33422/2nd.worldcte.2021.01.22

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New Public Management in Taiwan Higher Education: Are We There Yet?

Claire Y. H. Tao

ABSTRACT: 

As public universities in Taiwan are state-dependent organizations and historically enjoy higher prestige than private universities and receive more talented students, faculty and resources, this study aims to gain a deeper understanding of how the public universities are governed. Due to a worldwide public administration reform phenomenon since the late 1970s, New Public Management (NPM) is assumed as the superiority of managerial techniques. This study is to analyze, particularly, how the leading public universities in Taiwan strategize to pursue international competitiveness in the globalized era through the lens of New Public Management. Not only review of literature and legislative documents are utilized to analyze the overall situation of governance of public universities in Taiwan. In order to learn at first-hand about stakeholders’ perspectives, the author also interviewed eleven participants, ranging from vice presidents, senior administrators, to students, from public universities to gain the insights. The interview result data analysis was carried out inductively via coding using the ATLAS.ti software. The result suggests that NPM principles have yet to be firmly incorporated into Taiwan’s higher education and university global competitiveness can be enhanced if the elements of NPM can be applied in university governance since the effectiveness and efficiency of its operation can be improved. On this basis, future research can be focused on what causes the retardation in the implementation of the NPM practice in Taiwan’s higher education and how to enhance a university governance structure or model, especially in the country where bureaucratic structure and top-down decision making model in HEIs remains dominant.

Keywords: globalized era, international competitiveness, New Public Management, Taiwan, university governance.