27 Jun, 2007 in
Taiwan by
Fili Tags:
academics,
international_business,
ncku,
nctu,
phd_degree,
scholarship,
tainan,
taipei,
Taiwan,
taiwanese
Taiwanese universities : NCKU vs. NCTU
Now that I know that I’ve been accepted to NCKU and NCTU in Taiwan, and that there’s the Taiwan scholarship to back that up, there’s the simple yet difficult issue of where I should go. There are so many small details and so much uncertainty that I’m sometimes not sure what the right direction is. I’ll be spending the next year in Taiwan studying for an International Business PhD degree, other than that - I have no clue.
Aside from my long discussed concerns about Taiwanese academics, here are some of the considerations for choosing either NCTU or NCKU :
- Location: NCKU is in Tainan. NCTU’s main campus is in Xinzhu but the College of Management is in Taipei. How that NCTU Xinzhu-Taipei thing works - I have no idea. BTW - I’ve been getting a lot of confusing information about the weather differences between Taipei and Tainan, but I honestly don’t care about that very much.
- What people say: Let just say that I don’t have many people to consult, and it’s not for lack of trying. Two have been kind enough to share their opinions - Michael Turton, and the other says good things about the NCTU program in the Forumosa forums. It’s odd that I found no other English blogging opinions on neither ones of those universities, aside from Scott Sammers’ which isn’t from personal experience.
- Scholarships: International students don’t have to pay tuition fees in both. NCKU offers a 10,000NT scholarship support, NCTU offers 20,000NT. NCKU offers shared-room dorms for free (usually ~6000NT$ per semester), I’m still trying to figure out NCTU. It seems that those scholarship change for those awarded the Taiwan scholarship, though the details are confusing. There’s a very interesting scholarship offered by NCTU called "Scholarship for Students to Study in Taiwan, Mainland China, and Hong Kong" that mentions combining studies in all the JiaoTung universities and two others in HK. Honestly, this sounds excellent, but I have no idea how practical this scholarship really is.
- Program : I have no clue. There’s little information on the NCKU page, and even less on NCTU. While the NCKU at least has general technical information, NCTU offers very little. In general, there’s room for improvement in the way English portals for the top Taiwanese universities look like and how frequently those are updated (NCKU, NCTU). If you take a look at the Hebrew University main website, you’d see that while most students study in Hebrew, the English website is sometimes even richer than the one in Hebrew, especially when it comes to university introduction. At least, there’s clear indication of the study programs with a listing of the professors and their publications. Which brings me to the next point.
- Professors: It’s extremely difficult to know exactly who the university faculty members are and what they’re researching. There are almost no publication lists, it’s unclear what they’re interested in and the kind of PhD students they’re looking for, e-mail addresses and personal homepages are not always updated. With the little I was able to find there seems to be one professor in International Marketing in NCTU that’s on track for what I’m interested in. Even looking up names on Google & Google Scholar doesn’t help with most. I might be missing something, it might be a Pinyin name problem…
- Rankings: As far as I know - NCKU has a slightly better reputation in Taiwan than NCTU. It also shows in the international Taiwanese university rankings.
- Students: There’s no information on the other students in NCTU, but the NCKU’s list is interesting. The PhD students in NCKU that are not Taiwanese mostly come from - US, Vietnam, Myanmar, Cambodia and Bangladesh.
There are a million other small details that I already forgot. Think of any other important things to ask about that I overlooked?
Given the choice, which of those universities will you go to?
David on Formosa
| June 27th, 2007 at 8:42 am #
Perhaps I was wise to apply to just one university and not have to worry about making a choice. I understand your concerns though. I have had difficulty getting responses from the university and I feel like I should have a lot more information about the course than I actually do. It is stepping into the unknown.
fiLi
| June 27th, 2007 at 9:34 am #
You’re not going to help me with this, eh?
Maybe you could tell a little about how you chose NCCU and your program. I actually know quite a few people who went to NCCU, and for non-tech stuff, they have a very good rep.
David on Formosa
| June 27th, 2007 at 9:55 am #
I looked through the list of universities in Taiwan that had courses in areas that I was specifically interested in. That narrowed the choice down to about five universities. I ended up choosing NCCU because their program is specifically for international students and it looks interesting. I also think NCCU is one of the more well known and reputable universities in Taiwan.
I will write some more about it on my blog at a later date.
Mark
| July 2nd, 2007 at 10:37 pm #
What do you want to do with the degree after you finish?
fiLi
| July 2nd, 2007 at 11:22 pm #
Keep doing the things I like to do, in a place and culture that I adore.
Scott Sommers
| July 7th, 2007 at 6:08 am #
I think Mark is asking the right question. What do you want to do with the degree and how will this program help you achieve this? If you have any questions left once you have answered this, you can ask the school directly.
fiLi
| July 7th, 2007 at 6:30 am #
Thanks, but…
“Ask the school directly” just doesn’t work, especially for somebody not currently in Taiwan. I might be doing things wrong, but it’s extremely difficult for foreigners, if not impossible, to get questions answered and receive extra information about the Taiwanese programs.
Also, I’m not really sure that’s the right question here. Having gone through a few degrees so far I found that my before and after perspective was completely different. While setting practical goals 3-5 years ahead sounds good, it might be problematic in this case. There are endless unknown variables, and I have absolutely no idea what to expect.
Why study in Taiwan, then? bottom line - because it’s something I feel I would like to do. Any other practical goals I can probably achieve much easier-faster-better with a western-HK-Singaporean degree.
sb. from NCTU
| July 29th, 2007 at 7:36 pm #
thought this might help
http://cos.adm.nctu.edu.tw/en/Course/History/index.asp
it’s a course schedule of previous semesters
course type 必修- required
選修- optional
David on Formosa » Taiwan Studies at NCCU | October 23rd, 2007 at 12:10 pm #
[...] has been admitted to a Ph.D. program and is making a choice between two universities. While I don't have to make a similar decision I agree with some of fiLi's concerns, [...]
Studying in Taiwan - applications now open | Fili's world
| March 7th, 2008 at 7:14 am #
[...] Taiwanese universities : NCKU vs. NCTU [...]