ABSTRACT
This study aims to analyse the trends, challenges and prospects of technical and vocational education (TVE) Policies in Taiwan. Since the 1970s, Taiwan, experiencing successful economic growth, has been named as one of the Four Asian Tigers. In the 1990s, a series of Taiwan's TVE reforms resonating with its embrace of the knowledge economy upgraded and converted many technical institutions into universities, resulting in greater credentialism and academic expectations at the TVE institutional and individual levels. TVE students are then permeated with more general knowledge, and gradually disconnected from industrial practicality, hands-on skills and notably employability. Due to Taiwan's determination to head for Industry 4.0 and Sustainable Development Goals, the state is challenging its widening skills gap by launching the latest Curriculum Guidelines for 12-Year Basic Education in 2014, Technical and Vocational Education Act in 2015 and Guidelines for Technical and Vocational Education Policies in 2016. To what extent can the TVE policies in Taiwan be re-oriented towards economic and social sustainability? To answer this, the discussions over the positioning and functioning of TVE in the present and future are put forward from multiple stakeholders’ perspectives, and policy implications for why to skill, what to skill and how to skill are sent.
