Asia University (AU) promotes the New Southbound Policy of the government with great achievements this year! First, being supported financially by the government, AU will set up a “Taiwan Education Center” in Indonesia as approved by the Ministry of Education (MOE). Second, AU has got this year a student-intern project supported by the MOE with a subsidiary of 4.22 million NTD. Third, AU has obtained a grant of 2.86 million NTD from the MOE as well of the so-called “Exploring Dreams in Academics.” Both projects rank No. 1 among all Taiwan universities in the aspect of financial support amount.

AU President Jing-Pha Tsai mentioned that the “Taiwan Education Center” is to be set up in Indonesia by the “China Asia Associated University (CA2),” which is a union of the China Medical University (CMU) and AU. The internationalization and school-running experiences with high global rankings of the two universities will be advantageous to the running of the center to provide services to all Taiwan universities. He also emphasized that the high-quality faculty and research achievements, as well as the complete school systems in Taiwan will be a great niche for expanding the scale of the international academic exchanges with Indonesian universities and high schools.

The Dean of the International College at AU, Prof. Ying-Huei Chen, mentioned that the resources of the CA2 will be well utilized to help Taiwan universities to expand the market of student recruiting in Indonesia. In addition, a Chinese Language Center will be established to help cultivation of bilingual talents for the Taiwan entrepreneurs in Indonesia. “AU has also set up a Southeast Asia Academic Exchange Center last year,” said Dean Chen, “to make internationalization effors to support the New Southbound Policy of the government.” On the other hand, so far AU has 30 sister universities in Indonesia, in which the Gahjah Mada University ranks No. 4 nationally; and AU already has 315 alumni and 60 in-school students from Indonesia up to now, as pointed out by Dean Chen.

“A total of 15 students from AU are now working in Singapore Changi Airport as interns, with a good monthly income of about 50,000 NTD per person,” said Dean Chen, “and the internship is part of the 3+1 degree program (3-year study in AU plus 1-year overseas training) offered by AU. “This year, it is really a victory of AU to be granted by the MOE the above-mentioned projects with supports of milions of NT dollars for the New Southbound Policy; and by the projects, 70 students of AU will be subsidized to take interns in Singapore Changi Airport this summer,” said President Tsai.