Graduate institute in Taiwan punished for poor dissertation quality

TAIPEI -- Taiwan's education authority suspended a graduate institute from recruiting students from next year for substandard dissertations, local media reported Tuesday.

The education authority found that a large number of dissertations submitted by students at the Graduate Institute of Engineering Technology of the Department of Intelligent Automation Engineering, Chung Chou University of Science and Technology, were irrelevant to engineering technologies, the Taipei-based United Daily reported.

It is the first graduate institute in Taiwan receiving such a punishment due to irrelevant dissertation topics.

According to the review on the institute's dissertations since 2013, over 100 of the 167 graduate dissertations covered irrelevant topics such as the influence of astrology on business management and the relation between teachers' sense of humor and creative teaching.

The university announced Monday that it decided to suspend the institute from admission for "an indefinite duration," according to local media.

The university president, vice president and a former dean of the department were all given a demerit and the current department dean was removed.

The university also announced other correction measures, including revising protocols of dissertation review and training of faculty.

Yu Jung-hui, president of the Union of Private School Educators in Taiwan, told the press that, provided that similar incidents were found in other private colleges and universities, the union will assist the education authority to launch a large-scale inspection and push education institutions to tighten the scrutiny.

Chung Chou University of Science and Technology is a private university based in Changhua county, central west Taiwan.