Raise Gov’t Salaries to Ease Pressures of Pension/Annuities Reforms

 Raise Gov’t Salaries to Ease Pressures of Pension/Annuities Reforms

China Times E-News Editorial (Taipei, Taiwan, ROC)

  July 11, 2017

 Translation of an Except

The brain drain in university faculty in recent years has become a serious problem; many well-known professors moved to Hong Kong, Singapore or Mainland universities to teach. Since the passage of pension reforms, massive discussions on reductions of university faculty salaries have emerged on the Internet, indicating a flow of uneasy atmospherics on university campuses. Premier Lin Chuan has instructed the establishment of an ad hoc committee to study the issue of adjusting faculty salaries and benefits, or erecting a flexible salary system in order to curb the excessive brain drain to the extent of affecting national competitiveness. In fact, not only college professors’ salaries need to be raised, the salaries for the military, civil servants, and public school teachers should all be adjusted.

College faculty salaries are too low. In countries that have per capita incomes lower than Taiwan, including the Mainland and Southeast Asia, university professors’ salaries have long surpassed those in Taiwan. In recent years, Mainland universities have been recruiting faculty in Taiwan, offering salaries equal to multiples of what they earn in Taiwan. In comparison, college faculty salaries in domestic universities have been lacking competitiveness; and now that pensions for retirement are also reduced, the attractiveness of the vocation as university faculty has lost even more luster.

If faculty salaries are not readjusted now, the brain drain of Taiwan's college faculty will accelerate, eventually leading to the inevitable sliding of faculty quality in domestic colleges. This also represents the decline of the quality in higher education and the society as a whole. However, Taiwan should not only readjust faculty salaries in higher education, but should consider adjusting salaries of all public functionaries, even the various expenditures the government has to dispense abroad should also be readjusted. For one thing, it can resolve the sequela of pension reforms, and ease the impasse created by low salaries in Taiwan. 

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