Commenting on the ever-dropping scores qualifying high school graduates to enter colleges or universities, Michael M.C. Lai, president of National Cheng Kung University in the southern city of Tainan, said there are too many undergraduate schools in Taiwan and that the quality of the students, as well as the institutes themselves, continues to degenerate each year.

"All high school graduates stand a chance of getting into a university so long as they know how to write their names, " Lai said sarcastically.

In a speech he delivered at NCKU titled: Challenges Facing Taiwan's Higher Education Sector, Lai said he is extremely worried about the future of Taiwan's colleges and universities given the problems they face, including ever-declining enrollment rates, lack of students and declining academic quality.

He said Taiwan's higher education sector used to be a place of elite education, with only 20 percent-30 percent of high school graduates able to pass the fiercely competitive joint college entrance examinations.

Today, however, the higher education sector is designed for all, with almost every high school graduate in the country being qualified to enter university.

Some of the country's more-than 160 colleges and universities have accepted students who scored as low as 7 in their entrance exams, due to the fierce competition for students and the low birth rate, he added.

However, he went on, some top-notch universities have not been affected by the situation and have continued to enroll only top-notch students, so that their teaching and research qualities have not been compromised.

(By Deborah Kuo)