Taipei, Nov. 1 (CNA) Opportunities to pursue higher education in the United Kingdom (U.K.) will be on display during the upcoming week at a biannual education exhibition and academic conference organized by the British Council, it was announced Thursday.
The 2007 Education U.K. Exhibition, a biannual event which showcases offers and programs from various U.K. universities, will be held from Nov. 3-8 in Taipei, Kaohsiung, Taichung and Hsinchu. The inaugural U.K.-Taiwan Higher Education Conference will gather 220 university officials from both sides for discussion on collaboration and exchange issues.
Fourteen prestigious universities, including Cambridge University, Oxford University and Imperial College London, which ranked in the top 50 in Europe by U.K.'s Times Higher Education Supplement, are among 85 institutions that will participate in the exhibition, said Dawn Chen, Head of British Council's Education Promotion section.
As usual, Chen said, business management, marketing and finance are still among the most popular majors among Taiwanese students who plan to study in the U.K., but more students are taking up courses of translation, English-teaching, science-related subjects, arts and design in recent years.
The trend shows that Taiwanese students have come to recognize the U.K.'s diverse academic prowess and its strong performance in science, technology and creative industry, which was not the case in the past, she noted.
The Taiwan-U.K. conference will be highlighted by a keynote speech from Stephen Jackson, Director of Reviews of Quality Assurance Agency (QAA) for Higher Education, said Lai Hsin-yuan, Head of British Council's Education and Science section.
One of the most important objectives of the conference will be learning from the U.K.'s experience in monitoring and assuring the quality of higher education, one of the most-discussed educational issues in Taiwan after the explosion in the number of universities since the late 1990s, Lai said.