(This article is excerpted from the 794th issue of CommonWealth Magazine, "Future Higher Education" column, March 18, 2024, https://www.cw.com.tw/article/5129684)

In response to the trend of continuous technological changes, universities will gradually expand the educational spectrum to meet education needs in the future. Technical high schools must face the reality that students tend to pursue higher education, and their curriculum should focus more on practice and then guide them back to academic subjects, thereby laying a solid foundation of knowledge for students. In the teaching scene of universities, professors often expect students to have mastered certain skills before admission. However, if students remain stuck in outdated technical knowledge, it can pose a challenge for university professors.

The technical knowledge taught by technical high school teachers must undergo continuous updating to keep pace with rapid changes. After the amendment of the “Technical and Vocational Education Act” at the end of 2019, many teacher trainees decided to stay in the industry, resulting in a loss of technical and vocational education teachers.

Therefore, it is suggested to address the future demand for technical teachers and provide more flexibility. To bridge the gap between academia and industry, one approach is for teachers to learn from industry during summer and winter breaks, or for schools to hire industry experts through industry-academia cooperation, thus eliminating the need for a full year of commitment. Another approach is to take inventory of the various teacher shortages in technical high schools across Taiwan in the past 5 to 10 years so that students who are interested in teaching need not worry about becoming wandering teachers, and talented individuals can be precisely recruited into the teacher training system.

Most importantly, technical high school teachers must recognize that the reality is their learned technical skills will iterate every 3 to 5 years. As businesses undergo transformations, technical high schools, as the frontline in talent cultivation, must not be late in transforming behind the enterprise.