This study is a sub-project, with a focus on the field of higher education, of the integrated project of the study of educational equity in Taiwan, conducted on behalf of the National Academy for Educational Research. This study is a 2-years' project. In the first year (conducted from January 2010 to December 2010), this study has constructed a set of 45 indicators (in four main dimensions and 11 sub-dimensions), via adopting the methods of document analysis, literature review, 3-rounds' focus group discussion, and the Delphi method. The second year's study, conducted from May 2011 to June 2012, via collecting opinion and revised suggestions from 2 meetings of expert consultation, has tried to look at the implementation of higher education in terms of the indicators proposed and constructed in the first year, to review the current provision of higher education in Taiwan in relation to the equity of higher education, and to understand the international trends. Based upon the suggestions of experts to use the existing available official statistics and reliable data base of higher education, rather than conducting another independent empirical survey, this study has reviewed the feasibility of the proposed indicators in practice, and proposed suggestions related to the modification of indicators and to the policy reforms in the future.
The main conclusions of this study can be summarized as follows:
Firstly, as to the context of backgrounds, it is found that, as higher education has expanded tremendously, there has been improvement in the equal provision of higher education between sexes, but inequalities of opportunity of higher education have increased in terms of the family economic backgrounds.
Secondly, as to the equity of access to higher education, it is found that as higher education has expanded tremendously, and the opportunities of higher education have increased, but the inequalities of higher education remain.
Thirdly, as to the equity of allocation of higher education resources, it is found that the government's policy of allocating higher education funds through competitive funding has resulted in the greater inequalities among higher education institutions.
Fourthly, as to the equity of learning performance, it is found that family social economic backgrounds of students still have profound impacts on students' learning results.
Based on the above findings, there are the following three suggestions proposed:
First, the government should play a more positive role in promoting the equity of higher education, as well as the main provider of higher education funding.
Second, all higher education institutions should endeavor to set up their comprehensive systems of student guidance and financial assistance, and to improve the quality of teaching, in order to achieve the equity of higher education.
Third, related studies in the future could try to select some specific issues and case studies to review and re-examine the feasibility of indicators for assessing the equity of higher education, so that by establishing a new set of indicators for assessing equity of higher education, a more comprehensive picture of the provision of higher education in Taiwan can be revealed.
