The Executive Yuan Council today passed a draft amendment to the Degree Conferral Act. It will be sent to the Legislature for deliberation.
According to the Ministry of Education (MOE), this amendment is meant to adapt Taiwanese academia to current trends by making degree conferral more flexible and the educational system more diversified, which is in turn expected to increase its international competitiveness. The act was last amended on June 23, 2004.
The major points of the amended act are as follows:
1. Each junior college or university will determine the names and levels of the degrees it confers after approval by its academic affairs council. This council's decision no longer needs be reported to the MOE for review and recordation. (Article 3)
2. In lieu of a master's thesis, candidates for a master's of physical education (or a similar subject) may submit a creative work, achievement report or technical report. For a master's of professional practice program, a professional practice report may substitute for a master's thesis. The standards for this professional practice shall be formulated and established by each university. (Article 7)
3. Associate's, bachelor's, master's and doctoral students may all pursue a minor, second major or other program of study. (Article 14)
4. Assistant professors and assistant research fellows of the Academica Sinica may now serve as master's examination committee members. (Article 8)
5. Associate professors and associate research fellows of the Academica Sinica may now serve as doctoral examination committee members. (Article 10)
6. Those who simultaneously pursue separate courses of study at different colleges or universities should upon graduation have the name of their original school noted on the diploma from their second school. Diplomas for distance learning students should include an appendix stating that distance learning was the method the student used to take the class. (Articles 14-15)
7. The stipulation that honorary doctorates must be reported to the MOE for review and approval is abolished. In the spirit of university autonomy, the delineation of which members of a school must make up the honorary doctoral degree review committee is also eliminated. (Article 16)
8. The method in which doctoral and master's theses or reports are preserved is amended. The school for which a work was created must send it to the National Central Library for its collection. (Article 17)
9. If a school's competent authority deems there is significant suspicion that a thesis, professional practice report, creative work, achievement report or technical report for that school is plagiarized or fraudulent, it must inform that school and give it a deadline for investigating and handling the matter. Likewise, if a graduated student's enrollment qualifications or attendance records are found to be false or fraudulent, the student's degree shall be revoked; a public notice of this revocation issued; and the student must return his or her diploma. This is an incorporation of the provisions of Article 5-1 of the Enforcement Rules of the Degree Conferral Act. (Article 18)
10. As plagiarism and fraud of theses, professional practice reports, creative works, achievement reports and technical reports are increasingly frequent, new punishments for perpetrators and other responsible parties are put in place. (Article 19)