Taiwan Assessment and Evaluation Association (TWAEA) has worked closely with other international evaluation associations recently. In addition to arranging mutual visits with evaluation associations from Japan and Thailand, TWAEA has begun to work with the association in Germany since 2018 signing MOU with them. Moreover, in July, 2018, a delegation from Korea Accreditation Board for Vocational Higher Education (KAVE) came to Taiwan to pay a special visit to TWAEA to understand our quality assurance system in higher education. Chairman Fu received them in person, and the two sides exchanged experience in the evaluation implementation after the briefing. The delegation was impressed with our evaluation experience to technological and vocational education and wished to continue the exchange and communication sustainably.
KAVE, established in 2009, is a subsidiary organization to Korean Council for College Education (KCCE). The accreditation committee of KAVE was established to improve the fairness and objectivity of university accreditation. KAVE was recognized by Korea’s Ministry of Education as an accreditation association in December 2010 and it is responsible for evaluation and accreditation related issues. Since 2011, accreditation is compulsory for every university in Korea and the Ministry of Education of Korea also announced that the accreditation results shall affect the administrative and financial budgets granted to schools. The purpose of KAVE’s visit this time was to better understand the current situations of the technical and vocational education, evaluation and accreditation mechanisms in both countries. Hopefully both parties can understand each other’s background and position through this visit, which can be helpful for future cooperation between the two associations.
In the future, TWAEA will continue to communicate with accreditation organizations from different countries; we would be happy to share Taiwan's accreditation experience with others, at the same time, it is expected that we could also learn from various countries to make our current system closer to the actual operation, to be in line with international standards. Hopefully the overall quality of higher education in Taiwan can be improved through the implementation of accreditation.