The Universities Become More while Students Are Getting Less? A System Analysis of the Taiwanese Higher Education Crisis

Under the trend of declining infant birth rate, higher education in Taiwan is now facing severe crises such as excessive number of universities, high level of unemployment, and the impact of colleges/universities’ withdrawal from market, etc. This study analyzes threats and opportunities confronted by the Taiwanese government and university operators with the Tragedy of the Commons, Limits to Growth and Fixes and Fail models that are derived from the System Archetypes. First, this study discusses developments and management of higher education in Taiwan by literature analysis and interviews. Secondly, it reviews the plans and strategies of the Ministry of Education toward this crisis. Finally, this paper analyzes the implementation strategies of the Taiwanese government and universities which include moderate adjustment of scale, reasonable number of schools, colleges/universities’ withdrawal mechanism, distinguishing feature enrollment, overseas schooling program, and so on. The research expects to introduce a more systematic approach to examine Taiwan’s current crisis in higher education and to seek survival strategy, then try to provide a feasible framework for coping with such crisis either in policy design or system practice level