In the courtyard of the private Chung Hsing High School, desks and chairs are piled high like a monument or an unlit bonfire. Mountains of rubble cover the play area as two construction workers pull more broken furniture from empty classrooms and throw it into a pickup truck.
The Central Private School in Taipei was closed in 2019 after financial problems due to low enrollment could not be resolved, and was sold to developers. The school was an early victim of a problem that is now sweeping Taiwan’s educational institutions: decades of declining birth rates mean there are no longer enough students to fill the classrooms.
Related: The South Korean think tank suggests that girls go to school earlier to increase the birth rate
Like much of East Asia, Taiwanese are struggling to achieve the “replacement rate” needed to maintain a stable population. That figure stands at 2.1 babies per woman, but Taiwan hasn’t reached that number since the mid-1980s. In 2023 the rate was 0.865.
Demographers and governments fear looming economic crises caused by a growing elderly population without enough working taxpayers to support them. In Taiwan, the impact of shrinking generations is already beginning to impact military recruitment, spilling over into school and university enrollments.
Between 2011 and 2021, the number of students in primary and secondary schools in Taiwan fell from 2.3 million to less than 1.8 million.
Ms. Lai lives in Taipei City and has a 22-month-old child, but plans to retire there. “The costs of childcare are now high, both in terms of time and money. It is difficult to consider a second child without increasing salary levels and reducing working hours.”
“I focus on the quality of life for myself and my baby. Given the current distribution of income and time, it would be difficult to maintain the satisfactory status quo if we had a second child.”
Private schools, which are not as popular as public schools, lead the way. News reports indicate that dozens of private schools are facing closure, and the Taiwanese government’s list of schools in need of “extraordinary assistance” includes thirteen private and vocational schools at risk of closing as early as next year, it reported the Taipei Times in March. The Department of Education told the Guardian that 15 colleges and universities have closed since 2014. Last week it was announced that four of Taiwan’s 103 private universities have been ordered to close for the same reason as Chung Hsing High School.
Wu Chun-chung, the chairman of the Union of Private School Educators, told local media that he expects another 40 to 50 private universities to close by 2028.
Chou Ping, the chairman of the Taiwan Higher Education Union, said public universities do not face immediate closure, but universities in suburban areas, especially those of lower tier or those devoted more to humanities than voice subjects, are most at risk walked.
The government in Taiwan, like those in China, Korea and Japan, has tried various financial incentives and regulatory changes to encourage people to have more – or even no – children. But people continue to resist, citing the pressures of traditional gender roles placed unfairly on women, as well as the rising cost of living and the difficulty of balancing careers. Salaries in Taiwan are relatively low and city housing is expensive. This year, Taipei was found to be the second most unaffordable city in the world after Hong Kong when house prices were compared with average incomes.
Call to merge private with public
The parts of Taiwan with higher birth rates tend to be areas with a lower cost of living that are still close to the capital, regions with generous local subsidies like the Outlying Islands, or places with better employment opportunities and community services, like Hsinchu County. Hsinchu is Taiwan’s richest province, thanks to its vast science parks built largely around the semiconductor industry.
The population has grown over the past five years, attracting young families.
‘I think the parents are in Zhubei [a city in Hsinchu county] are relatively better off than those in other provinces and cities, so there appears to be no decline in the birth rate in Zhubei,” said Ms. Hou, a mother of two.
Fu Jie-lin, director of academic affairs at Jiafeng Primary School, says many high schools in Zhubei are overcrowded and parents are so nervous about securing a place that they try to pre-register their children while they are still newborns. . Local media have made predictions of a shortage of 1,000 school enrollment places by 2027.
But even Hsinchu’s baby boom appears to be waning, with Fu reporting a “sharp decline” in enrollments over the past two years. But it’s not necessarily a bad thing, he says. “The size of the school is the same and with fewer students, the school’s learning environment improves and students have more space.”
It’s a sentiment shared by union leader Chou. He says the faltering private tertiary institutions should be merged with public universities instead of being sold off to developers. Chou says Taiwan underfunds universities compared to other OECD countries and the number of students and teachers is much higher. Universities can expand their campuses and reduce class sizes, Chou suggests.
“If we spend more on public education, we can help more low-income students and the quality of education will improve.”
