Master’s education in Taiwan has been significantly transformed since the 1990s in an effort to cope with the knowledge-based economy and the growing demand for greater innovation. In such a context, this study examined how the expansion process of master’s education in Taiwan has impacted the labour market and employment opportunities over the past two decades through the lenses of credentialism and signalling theory. Adopting a longitudinal analysis, this study employed authoritative databases from 1995 to 2018, analysing the impacts of massification. Our empirical findings confirm that credential inflation is not obvious, while the signalling effect for a master’s degree remains stable, despite a slight decline since 2010. However, pursuing higher credentials (i.e. a master’s or even doctoral degree) is inevitable, as youth must maintain their market value through higher credentials. Furthermore, the massified master’s education sector brings serious challenges to educational equality and social mobility among different social groups. Disadvantaged students are the most vulnerable group in pursuit of this higher positional good at the societal level.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Bills, D. B. (2016) ‘Congested credentials: the material and positional economies of schooling’, Research in Social Stratification and Mobility 43: 65–70.
Blagg, K. (2018) The rise of master’s degrees: master’s programs are increasingly diverse and online. Washington, DC: Urban Institute.
Bollag, B. (2007) ‘Credential creep’, The Chronicle of Higher Education, 22 June. Retrieved from https://www.chronicle.com/article/Credential-Creep/25476.
Chan, S.J. and Lin, L.W. (2015) ‘Massification of higher education in Taiwan: shifting pressure from admission to employment’, Higher Education Policy 28(1): 17–33.
Chen, S.F. (1993) Higher education research essay collection. Taipei: Shi Da Shu Yuan. (in Chinese).
Chung, J.T. (1987) ‘To examine the idea of graduate education’, in C.H. Chang (ed) Critics on Taiwan education in 1986: voice of campus. Taipei: Dun Li Publisher, pp. 153–162. (in Chinese).
Directorate General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics, Executive Yuan (2019) Statistics of employment and unemployment, 10 November. Retrieved from https://www.dgbas.gov.tw/ct.asp?xItem=41085&ctNode=3102&mp=1.
Drennan, J. (2012) ‘Masters in nursing degrees: an evaluation of management and leadership outcomes using a retrospective pre-test design’, Journal of Nursing Management 20(1): 102–112.
Gu J., Li X., and Wang L. (2018) Higher education in China. Singapore: Springer.
Hoeling, S., Gudgeon, L.J.F., and Hagemeister, F. (2014) ‘The value of a graduate degree: changing returns to postgraduate qualifications in the UK’, Inquiries 6(9): 1–2.
Jung, J. and Lee, S.J. (2019) ‘Exploring the factors of pursuing a master’s degree in South Korea’, Higher Education 78: 855–870.
Lindley, J. and Machin, S. (2013) ‘The postgraduate premium: revisiting trends in social mobility and educational inequalities in Britain and America’. The Sutton Trust and the Education Endowment Foundation.
Liu, D., and Morgan, W.J. (2016) ‘Students’ decision-making about postgraduate education at g university in China: the main factors and the role of family and of teachers’, The Asia-Pacific Education Researcher 25(2): 325–335.
Marr, L. (2012) ‘Social mobility, higher education and lifelong learning’, Widening Participation & Lifelong Learning 14(2): 3–10.
Masayuki, M. (2013) ‘Postgraduate education, labor participation, and wages: an empirical analysis using micro data from Japan’. RIETI Discussion Paper Series 13-E-065. The Research Institute of Economy, Trade and Industry.
Ministry of Education in Taiwan. (2019a) ‘Education statistics of the Republic of China (Taiwan) 1995–2019’, 20 July. Retrieved from https://www.edu.tw/News_Content.aspx?n=829446EED325AD02&sms=26FB481681F7B203&s=B19AF3B0B4D7BFAC.
Ministry of Education in Taiwan. (2019b) ‘The number of outbound students for the past ten years’, 23 July. Retrieved from https://depart.moe.edu.tw/ed2500/News_Content.aspx?n=2D25F01E87D6EE17&sms=4061A6357922F45A&s=A6AD068477F61649.
Ministry of Labor in Taiwan. (2019) ‘Dynamic inquiry on salary survey by different type of jobs’, 20 July. Retrieved from https://pswst.mol.gov.tw/psdn/.
Neubauer, D.E., and Buasuwan, P. (2016) (eds.) Asia Pacific Graduate Education: Comparative Policies and Regional Developments. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
O’Donnell, V., Tobbell, J., Lawthom, R. and Zammit, M. (2009) ‘Transition to postgraduate study: practice, participation and the widening participation agenda’, Active Learning in Higher Education 10(1): 26–40.
Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) (2020) Graduation rates and entry rates, https://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx, accessed 10 April 2020.
Shavit, Y. and Park, H. (2016) ‘Introduction to the special issue: education as a positional good’, Research in Social Stratification and Mobility 43: 1–3.
Shen, H.R. and Lin, M.J. (n.d.) On the impacts of household income and asset upon children’s education: a case study of 1993–1995 age cohort and parent’s tax database, http://www.econ.ntu.edu.tw/ter/new/data/new/forthcoming/106-019.pdf, accessed 20 October 2019. (in Chinese).
Spence, M. (1973) ‘Job market signaling’, The Quarterly Journal of Economics 87(3): 355–374.
Støren, A. L., and Wiers-Jenssen, J. (2016) ‘Transition from higher education to work: are master graduates increasingly over-educated for their jobs?’, Tertiary Education and Management 22(2): 134–148.
Syverson, P. D. (1996) ‘Assessing demand for graduate and professional programs’, New Directions for Institutional Research 92: 17–29.
The NYU Dispatch. (2017) The curse of credentialism, https://wp.nyu.edu/dispatch/2017/11/17/the-curse-of-credentialism/, accessed 10 February 2020.
Trow, M. (2000) ‘From mass higher education to universal access: the American advantage’, Minerva 37: 303–328.
Van de Werfhorst, H.G. (2009) ‘Credential inflation and educational strategies: a comparison of the United States and the Netherlands’, Research in Social Stratification and Mobility 27(4): 269–284.
Waite, S. (2017) ‘Postgraduate wage premiums and the gender wage gap in Canada’, Canadian Journal of Higher Education 47(2): 156–187.
Yang, C.H., Lin, C.H.A., and Lin, C.R. (2011) ‘Dynamics of rate of returns for postgraduate education in Taiwan: the impact of higher education expansion’, Asia Pacific Education Review 12(3): 359–371.
Yang, C.C. and Chan, S.J. (2017) ‘Is higher education expansion related to increasing unemployment rates? a comparative analysis of Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan’, International Journal of Chinese Education 5(2): 162–186.
Zwanikken et al. (2014) ‘Outcome and impact of master of public health programs across six countries: education for change’, Human Resources for Health, 12(1): 40.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
Publisher's Note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Yang, CC., Chan, SJ. Massified Master’s Education in Taiwan: A Credential Game?. High Educ Policy 33, 619–635 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41307-020-00213-x
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/s41307-020-00213-x