Internationalization initiatives of Taiwan's higher education: a stepping stone to regional talent circulation or reproduction of unbalanced mobility scheme?

Abstract

Purpose As an emerging market of international education, Asian countries ambitiously launched internationalization initiatives and strategies to attract international talent. Since the 1990s, Taiwan's government has implemented various internationalization policies. Partly affected by the political forces of neighboring China, Taiwan's government launched the New Southbound Policy (NSP) as the main regional strategy in 2016. One of the aims of this strategy was to promote mutual talent mobility between Taiwan and New Southbound Policy countries (NSPC). The purpose of this study is to explore how the NSP influences the student mobility scheme in Taiwan. Design/methodology/approach This study adopted the qualitative document analysis to investigate and compare the major Asian countries' internationalization focus and summarize Taiwan's internationalization development process and policy priorities. Moreover, a qualitative approach was adopted in order to collect data from 2005 to 2018 to examine Taiwan's student mobility scheme under the policy change. Findings Under the influence of the NSP after 2016, the student mobility scheme between Taiwan and NSPC could be categorized into five categories in accordance with the mobility rate. Although the nation-driven policy was considered powerful, the unbalanced flow between Taiwan and NSPC became severe. Research limitations/implications The study lacked statistics on the degree level of outbound Taiwanese students going to NSPC. It could not compare the student mobility scheme between Taiwan and NSPC by degree level. Originality/value The research looked at the initiatives Asian countries have developed in order to raise higher education internationalization and regional status, which shed light on the national/regional approaches under the global change.