Why Boston, why not Taiwan?

T

aiwanese institutions, which are all set to woo Indian students for their engineering and business schools, will be travelling to Bangalore soon.

“Next year we will travel to Bangalore to enroll students passing out of high school for our engineering and business schools,” Wenchyi Ong, Representative, Taipei Economic and Cultural Centre, said.

Though the Taiwanese authorities would like to launch the programme of admitting Indian high school students from 2010 in New Delhi, students from the Indian IT hub would get admission to Taiwanese institutions from the 2011 academic session. “Our target is to admit about 3,000 Indian students in the next five years,” Wenchyi said.

Claiming that education in Taiwan would be far less expensive than what Indian students spend in US or Australian universities, Wenchyi said technical and business programmes in Taiwan were of international standard. “Indian students would have no problem if they enroll themselves in any of the top 10 universities in Taiwan for engineering and business programmes as these courses are bi-lingual, both in Chinese and English,” he said.

Elaborating on how Indian students could study in world-class universities at a minimal cost, Wenchyi said if they had to shell out US$ 40,000 a year for a particular course in the US or Australia, it would be at least 20 per cent less of that amount in Taiwan.

“Moreover, the students would not get a culture shock and their parents could be rest assured that their children would not get swayed away by the Yankee culture, if they spend a couple of years in Taiwan,” he said.

Indian students applying in a Taiwanese university need not appear for a separate test and the grades which they had secured here along with their TOEFL score would be considered for admission.  Apart from self-financed courses, the Taiwanese Government offers a number of scholarships, which have been an annual affair since 2004. This year 18 Indian students got scholarship to study Masters and Ph.D in major science-related fields.