Okay, my topic today is education 2.0.
I want to focus on the right path of Taiwan's higher education.
I'll share my advice first to the students and their parents,
second to the government,
third to the universities.
With these three parts,
I'll start with thinking.
What to think about thinking?
Recently our society focuses on the problems that higher education graduates are facing unemployment, low wage and even reduced to cheap workers overseas.
All of a sudden, improving vocational education seems to be the prescription for unemployment.
But deep in my heart, I think that
over-focus on practical education is toxic to Taiwan's future.
Why toxic?
I want to share with you a discussion,
a conversation across time.
This discussion related to our topic is between Albert Einstein and Thomas Edison,
where there are thoughts worth our thinking.
In 1921, when Einstein knew that Edison once said college education is useless,
he replied,
only colleges that teach practical skills are useless.
The original saying is here.
It's not so very important for a person to learn facts.
For that he does not really need a college.
He can learn from the books.
This is important.
He said that the value of college education is not to learn facts, but to train your brain
to think what's not on the books.
The things on books are already explored by others.
You need to discover ideas that never come to other minds.
So my suggestion for students is,
go to college for the ability to think, not for the diploma.
And what's important is that,
the ability to think is the key to success.
The rest are all not. Good luck is not.
Now we come to the second part. My short advice for students is over.
The second part,
University Act, which Ministry of Education (MOE) should just let go.
Actually I'm not an expert on education.
But I just share what I think.
What day is today, September 30th?
It's her birthday.
I don't know. Maybe about 1/3 of you know her.
Her paternal grand-grandfather is Li Hongzhang, an influential court official during the Qing Dynasty,
and her maternal grandfather was a prominent naval commander.
She was born on September 30th, 1920,
in the leased area in Shanghai. She's a Libra.
Who's she?
Eileen Chang.
But today is also the anniversary of her death.
Why?
She wasn't actually died on September 30th.
On the Moon Festival in 1995,
When she was 75 years old,
Chang was found dead, alone in her apartment in Los Angeles.
This is a coincidence in her life.
Today is September 30th.
This is her script for 'Yi Xiang Ji', a semi-biographical prose.
I'd like to make this speech as a tribute to her, and her ideal in writing.
The reason why I mentioned the ideal in writing is because I like this quote from Iowa Writers' Workshop,
from its 75th anniversary reunion,
You are here when words change the world.
If words change the world is the ideal of writers,
I'd like to know,
What is the ideal of Taiwan's higher education?
What's the mission of Ministry of Education?
What's the mission?
On the MOE website, you can't find mission.
You only get to see what they are doing.
And they even update their status like instant news!
But I turned it upside down and I couldn't find its mission.
They are working without mission.
My brother often says,
Big trouble comes when you work hard but only to get things wrong.
Platonic Academy was founded in 387 BC in Athens and lasted for more than 900 years after Plato's death.
Plato's goal was to create a place where teachers and students can think and debate.
This kind of college does not exist here in this country. It has gone for a long time.
Reading Taiwan's University Act, you only see detailed organization introduction,
and how the government what to manage colleges in a stiff way.
You can't see the plan for the future 100 years.
As the saying goes, it takes a hundred years to educate people.
However, what's the higher purpose of Taiwan's education for the future 100 years ahead ?
MOE seemingly spends every day on trivial tasks like repairing broken windows,
so they can't see the opportunity of different universities showing their own strength.
They seems to expect every university to be the same
by using the same law.
Either private or public schools are managed in the same way.
Which is not reasonable.
The article I of University Act goes,
A university aims to develop research, nurture talents, to richen the culture, to serve the society and to promote national development.
Okay. They said universities enjoy autonomy.
and MOE is the organ in charge.
I want to do something.
Please notice the first two words of the article I,
which refer to universities.
So this sentence looks like the mission of a university.
But if I replace the word "university" with "company," nothing goes wrong!
My company aims to develop research, nurture talents, to richen the culture, to serve the society and to promote national development.
Anything wrong?
No.
If it can be substituted by any other words, it's actually not a definition.
It is wrong.
Also, the fifth article of the law says universities should perform self-examination regularly.
Yes.
But it also says that,
to improve the development of universities, MOE have the right to examine schools.
They are telling you that MOE can examine and decide whether schools can add new programs or enroll more students.
Which means what said before doesn't really count.
Autonomy? There's no such thing.
If Company Act also gave such absurd rights to Ministry of Economic Affairs,
there wouldn't be any successful Taiwan companies.
Because without passing the examination, you can't hire employees.
You can't raise salary.
So how do you run a company?
You can't.
So I advise the government to have University Act revised as soon as possible,
by others.
Because
Why not MOE?
This person said,
It is said by him, not me, so there should be something deep in it.
He said,
Problems cannot be solved by the same level of thinking that created them.
Let me tell you a true story.
There are some elephants in the swamps in Zambia.
As you can see.
The big one on the ground is a mother elephant.
On the right, a father elephant is trying to get her up by his front foot.
and on the left is a baby elephant.
Insiders often cannot save the group from lapse.
Because that's all they can think of.
They struggle and things get worse.
Struggling hard only lead to depletion of strength.
Which is quite miserable.
Outside help means different thinking model.
These humans thought for a while and said,
Let's get her out by a rope.
The baby elephant didn't have a rope itself.
Only the outsiders did.
It could do nothing but step on its mother.
Its mother kept sinking down, and so did it.
So, outside help means different thinking model,
which is usually helpful.
See, they got her out.
However, this is the most important part.
Things help you can also do you harm.
The people thought she might want to run away after getting out and end up falling into the hole again.
So at this time,
scaring and stopping her becomes necessary. 170 00:10:15,112 --> 00:10:18,434 You can see the people also got a stick in their hands so as to stop her.
What we can learn from this is that,
You can't be too gentle when trying to solve a problem.
Sometimes problems are just too big for people to help.
They tried several ways.
Even a towing vehicle. But all in vain.
Now self-awakening becomes the only opportunity.
The mother elephant didn't get towed out.
So how did she get out?
When she saw the baby elephant walking away,
she wanted to catch it up,
so she got the strength to get out.
She found the strength in her.
She struggled out by herself.
This touching story...
Makes me think what if, the mother elephant is MOE?
It can struggle out.
It definitely can do it.
Okay.
After the first and the second part,
here comes the third session.
4 minutes and 14 seconds. Okay, I'll try to control the time.
What if I say,
there's a big trouble ahead for higher education?
Currently, the cost of higher education is too high and the capacity is too low. Universities won't last.
If I say the campuses of major universities, including those in Taiwan, are going to be ruins after 30 years?
It's wrong for the government to pay sizeable amounts to subsidize the current management model.
If I say so, probably I won't get any attention
but some criticisms.
But what if it's said not by me,
but him?
You should know him.
You can check him up if you don't.
He lived long, teaching for all his life.
In the last few years of his life, he's been telling people
that our future is different from what we have now.
In March 10th, 1997.
Forbes interviewed him on future.
He shared a lot before talking about education.
His predictions all came true.
He predicted which companies would fall.
And it happened during the financial tsunami.
He said he didn't predict their downfall.
When asked, he said,
I'm not forecasting,
I'm seeing it.
before it was seen.
I saw things before they were seen.
This is the point.
So he said 16 years ago,
as I translated just now,
Universities will be ruins after 30 years.
They cannot survive.
How big the problem is?
It takes a long time to solve the problem. A time as long as the time we spent to go from printing to textbooks.
But we don't have 100 years to solve the university problem.
Higher education is a deep crisis, he said.
Okay, after this part,
if you are interested and search on the Internet,
you can find some principals and officers are discussing online,
about whether this argument is true.
In June of the same year, which is three months later,
when he was interviewed again,
he put it even more bluntly.
Universities won't survive.
Isn't it clear?
The future is outside the traditional campus,
outside the traditional classroom.
Distance learning is coming.
And the rest is history.
He said so, if my memory served me right,
in June, 16th when interviewed.
1 minute and 5 seconds.
Imagine MOE can identify with,
a beautiful campus without buildings,
a strict university without an entrance exam.
These sounds like paradoxes.
And a small university with a large faculty and student body.
There are more things to imagine. Endless things.
But what's more important is that in a school like that,
The students and the teachers go to class on the Moon Festival!
I hurried to get here and shared what I want to talk.
I believe there are a lot of childish thoughts.
But in the last 18 seconds, I want to tell you,
Some parts sounds like jokes, but maybe there is something in them, 269 00:15:33,084 -->00:15:37,670 which deserves your efforts, influence and imagination.
Maybe education 2.0 will come true somewhere.
The century witnessed many things we thought impossible.
Like Amazon. Like Steve Jobs.
I think many people here like him.
He said he wanted to make cell phone.
And people told him that cell phones are already made. What are you gonna do?
He said that he's gonna redefine cell phones.
I believe someone here can redefine Taiwan's higher education.
Thank you.