Educational improvement to whose images? – A coloniality perspective of higher education policy in Taiwan

Abstract

The recent reform movement of higher education policies, which are modeled on the top-ranked Western higher education institutions globally, has significantly impacted the administrative model among universities in Taiwan. This study takes the Higher Education Sprout Project, one of the current governmental higher education policies, as an example to examine the problem representation of the policy discourse and how one regionally selective university responds to the policy. This study aims to provide an alternative perspective to unpack how the global university rankings and the entrenched “world-class” imaginary have represented higher education improvement agenda in Taiwan. By bringing light to a coloniality perspective, this study argues that the ongoing colonial logic has been promoted and perpetuated by current higher education policies, which have reshaped the institutional mission of Taiwanese universities. The long-term misinterpreted connotation of “internationalization” and the entrenched “world-class” ideology within policy discourses have overlooked and systemically denied the Western hegemony of epistemic violence, as well as the Anglo-American dominated academic coloniality.