By Karen Shao Nv
"All professions are inferior; only studying is noble" is Confucian philosophy and the traditional value followed by the Chinese-speaking world. In the past, Taiwan's society was permeated with the sentiment that "attending a good university, getting a good job, and your future will be bright." However, as society gradually transformed and public consciousness rose, people began to realize that studying is no longer the only option. The Ministry of Education initiated a series of educational reforms and a policy to establish more universities. Years later, however, this led to the closure of private schools, while non-academic work faced higher barriers to entry and declining salaries, causing the younger generation to become the "working poor," unable to turn their lives around and feeling lost about their futures.
Looking back at Taiwan's education policy reforms: In 1994, the government responded to calls for educational reform by establishing the Education Reform Review Committee and passing the Teacher Training Law. In 1996, elementary schools implemented "one curriculum, multiple textbooks." In 1997, universities opened the conversion of junior colleges and colleges. In 1999, high schools implemented "one curriculum, multiple textbooks." In 2002, junior high schools also adopted this system. In 2014, the Twelve-Year National Education began rollout. Until this year, 2019, when the new curriculum framework took effect and college entrance exams allowed choosing 4 out of 5 subjects, students could attend university even with a score of zero in one subject. Although this appears to lighten students' burdens on the surface, the emphasis on humanities and extracurricular diverse learning instead sparked talk of "wealth gap," as some students' families simply cannot afford to support their participation in volunteer activities or training camps, and some don't even know where to find such information.
On the other hand, while junior and senior high school education is certainly important, the implementation of Twelve-Year National Education coincided with declining birth rates and an excess of universities. Now that university entrance barriers are low, students advance through the system almost as if there's a 16-year national education.
Academic credentials become diluted, student performance becomes standardized by society, and without a university degree, it seems you're starting behind. How should we address this phenomenon?
Julia Dai, Executive Secretary of the Association of Taiwan University Admissions, stated that while universities are part of higher education, they are not compulsory education and should not be universalized. This phenomenon also reflects that not all talented people in Taiwan are suited for university.
In this context, whether students entering the university system should continue their studies on campus has become a question for young people to reflect upon. According to the latest statistics from the Ministry of Education, 209,392 students took leaves of absence during the entire 106th academic year. Adding the 91,531 who withdrew, the total number of college students taking leaves of absence or withdrawing in the 106th academic year was 300,923, accounting for 23.6% of the total 1,273,894 college students. In other words, nearly 1 out of every 4 college students took a leave of absence or withdrew. Reasons for leave of absence include "work needs," "mismatch of interests," and "financial difficulties." Among these, students choosing to suspend studies due to mismatch of interests and work needs were notably higher than those facing financial difficulties.
Chen Po-yu started his own business, believing that school learning is too restrictive and learning directly from professionals is better.
"People who shouldn't have gone to university all went!" Chen Po-yu is 21 years old and took leaves of absence during both high school and university. He doesn't need school to learn well and practice his life direction. He believes the number of students on leave of absence will only increase.
The vast majority of reasons stem from the fact that Taiwan's parents or schools always advocate "get into a good university, then you can find a good job and earn good income."
But the transition from learning and student status to the workplace role isn't something every family teaches you how to navigate. Chen Po-yu says that even graduates from prestigious schools can get "badly beaten" when first entering the workplace. Most Taiwanese students only realize in their third or fourth year that "I need to find a job next year" and then search for internships, but by then it's too late—they have to take detours to find what they love.
Taking Chen Po-yu as an example, his first leave of absence was in the first semester of senior year. As the college entrance exam approached, he realized he didn't know what he could do after finishing school and attending university. Worried about making one wrong step that would ruin everything, he decided to take a leave of absence instead to find his direction.
At that time, Chen Po-yu wanted to become a veterinarian, so in the summer of his sophomore year, he interned at a veterinary clinic. However, without a license, he could only observe from the sidelines. But by entering the workplace, he saw the lifestyle of professionals and became "very certain about what I don't want." Initially, his family didn't support him, not because they believed only studying could change one's destiny, but because they worried he might go astray without school. Later, however, his parents changed their mindset, "it became more like trusting me to control my own life, take responsibility for my choices, and accept the consequences whether good or bad."
Chen Po-yu wrote in his own entrepreneurial space: "Now is the best time to explore myself."
Chen Po-yu's second leave of absence was February 15, 2019—"I remember the date very clearly"—during winter break of his sophomore year. He was studying New Media at Ming Chuan University, but he felt that "teachers didn't really give me much; maybe just teaching materials or textbooks, reading directly from them without creativity. Learning on my own is actually faster." Chen Po-yu believes that the media industry requires a lot of practical, hands-on experience. If it's all theory, you'll find you could learn it yourself anyway, and for students, learning theory doesn't help much.
When asked if leaving school made him feel anxious or panicked, Chen Po-yu said he felt no panic at all. After the first leave of absence, he certainly felt lost and didn't have a clear sense of his progress even though he was absorbing knowledge. At the time, he relied on joining various professional groups on Facebook to learn. Now he leans toward learning marketing and attending reading groups by "learning directly from people who have that expertise," which lets him learn much faster.
Talking about the differences between himself and friends his age, Chen Po-yu believes that after leaving school, the priority is maintaining a living: "you need to earn first before you have the right to talk about learning." His classmates' reactions to his leave of absence fall into two categories. Some found it "unsurprising" because he had his own opinions about many things and frequently participated in extracurricular organizations; many people understood that he was only half in school anyway.
But the other half of his classmates don't understand: "Won't you regret not getting this degree?" Chen Po-yu, however, thinks "it doesn't matter" because
"My purpose for coming to this school was to learn what I wanted to learn."
He had decided from the start not to graduate, so he even skipped required courses as a challenge to the system. After all, many startups today judge by ability rather than degree. In the future, if he transitions from entrepreneurship to job seeking, he can look for such companies and present how he can help them.
Scholars analyze "1 out of every 4 college students takes a leave of absence or withdraws," citing reasons including students not considering their aptitudes and interests when choosing schools, the multi-channel admission system implemented since 2002 having "zero results," and the policy of establishing more universities being a "complete mistake." The original hope was to give everyone a chance at university, but it instead harmed students, wasted national resources, and wasted young people's youth.
However, as a student on leave of absence, Chen Po-yu doesn't want to blame the education system. "I think some things are just fixed in place, like your family of origin—you can't choose it, so you have to find ways to adapt." Chen Po-yu's self-learning method involves using digital tools to categorize what he wants to learn by topic. Opening his online bookstore wishlist, there are over 500 items collected—so many that the list has reached its limit and he had to put additional items in a digital folder instead.
Chen Po-yu's book wish list exceeds 500 items, with many learning records stored on his computer.
Beyond self-learning, Chen Po-yu and his mother opened a co-creative learning space in Sanchong District, New Taipei City, providing venue rentals and courses for friends and community organizations to exchange and share knowledge. In a sense, he's putting into practice what he learned between his first and second leaves of absence, making it a platform for expression, and improving himself through sharing.
Life and learning after taking a leave of absence are not constrained by the school system's fixed progression through grades. Instead, he got early exposure to the workplace, society, politics, and law—unlike other students who study, focus on clubs and activities, and work part-time in fragmented ways to accumulate experience. By directly leaving campus and breaking free from his comfort zone early, entering society for real experience, his thinking, perspective, and viewpoint are deeper and broader than friends his own age. For long-term life planning, the benefits actually outweigh the drawbacks.
Leaving the system and comfort zone isn't that terrifying.
