Taipei, Nov. 14 (CNA) National Taiwan University (NTU) signed a pact Wednesday with China's Peking University and Tsinghua University to promote student and faculty exchanges among the three schools in order to nurture talent on both sides.
The pact was signed by Chang Ching-ray, dean of NTU's College of Sciences, Xie Xincheng, dean of the Department of Physics at Peking University and Xue Qikun, dean of the School of Sciences at Tsinghua University.
"We want to have more talent and research exchanges through such a pact, including teaching and experimenting. We hope to create a summer program for students so that best students from both sides can brainstorm and be inspired to seek further growth," Chang said.
The three universities plan to offer short-term courses in summer or winter vacations, Xie said.
In addition, the universities are considering the exchange of professors to help students conduct scientific experiments throughout the school year, Xie said.
As part of the short-term programs, Xue said, renowned professors from all universities will be invited to lecture, initially at the graduate schools, then at the universities themselves, with the location of the lectures being rotated between the three universities.
"The plan will begin in the summer of 2013 at the earliest," Xue said.
He also said that the best students in Taiwan prefer to study in the departments of electrical engineering and medicine, while the best students in China prefer to study basic sciences such as physics.
He noted that nowadays students consider how much money they can earn after graduating from a certain department, but such a consideration should not be overstressed.
He expressed the hope through such exchanges, more students will be encouraged to study basic sciences.
(By Hsu Chi-wei and Lilian Wu)