Massified Master’s Education in Taiwan: A Credential Game?

Abstract

Master’s education in Taiwan has been significantly transformed since the 1990s in an effort to cope with the knowledge-based economy and the growing demand for greater innovation. In such a context, this study examined how the expansion process of master’s education in Taiwan has impacted the labour market and employment opportunities over the past two decades through the lenses of credentialism and signalling theory. Adopting a longitudinal analysis, this study employed authoritative databases from 1995 to 2018, analysing the impacts of massification. Our empirical findings confirm that credential inflation is not obvious, while the signalling effect for a master’s degree remains stable, despite a slight decline since 2010. However, pursuing higher credentials (i.e. a master’s or even doctoral degree) is inevitable, as youth must maintain their market value through higher credentials. Furthermore, the massified master’s education sector brings serious challenges to educational equality and social mobility among different social groups. Disadvantaged students are the most vulnerable group in pursuit of this higher positional good at the societal level.