A Study of Faculty's Attitude to the Higher Technological and Vocational Education Reforms at Central Taiwan

Abstract

Taiwan's higher technological and vocational education (HTVE) reforms were intended to convert all traditional junior colleges into institutes of technology or universities of technology. Reforms increased instructors' responsibilities and obligations rapidly on their present workload.The responses indicated that the reforms mandated by the Ministry of Education in 1996 were already having a positive influence based on solid principles. The majority of instructors thought that reforms were neither based on good research nor addressed the common good of Taiwan. However, instructors were more concerned with gaining financial support. More importantly, a large number of instructors showed that they have not considered an early retirement. As a whole, faculty's attitude was equally divided between positive and negative.This research found no important or consistent predictability of faculty's attitude, while there existed a strong level of positive attitude among the decisive respondents based upon a multitude of predictive factors.