Students from all over the world bring ways of thinking quite different from those of Taiwanese, sometimes causing shockwaves in the classroom, sometimes providing opportunities for local students to reassess their own academic attitudes. (Jimmy Lin)

What happens when you throw for-eign students, from many countries, cultures, age groups, and educational systems, into Taiwan university classrooms? It's a bit like starting out with a very straightforward dish and then adding all of kinds of novel ingredients-the chef has to take into account the different ingredients, and tweak the flame, seasonings, and cooking techniques. If the chef performs well, the result will be haute cuisine. But handled badly it could turn out to be an unappetizing mishmash.

And how do Taiwan's campuses, faculty, and students appear in the eyes of foreign students? Can their negative impressions give us some insight into the shortcomings of higher education in Taiwan and provide impetus for change in terms of both teaching and learning?

The first culture shock that strikes many foreign students is "students sleep, eat, talk on their cell phones, and send text messages in class, and the teachers seem to give their tacit permission to do so!" says Antonio Beardall, a student from Belize in the Department of Information and Library Science at Tamkang University. At first he assumed that collegians in Taiwan simply didn't care about their schoolwork. It was only later that he learned that students are admitted into university departments in the order in which they placed on the national entrance exams, and a lot of students end up having to settle for fields in which they have no interest, and in which they have no intention of getting a job after graduation.

He wonders, "Why don't they just transfer to another department?" Over three years, he observed many students who were totally uninterested in and distant from their subjects, but he saw only one who dared to leave school, first do his compulsory military service, and then retake the university entrance exam in order to pursue his real love, fashion design.

He feels that in the face of this reality, teachers should do all they can to make class lively and interesting, or focus on practical applications in order to get the students interested. "But some of the teachers seem to have lost their passion for teaching, and they stand at the podium for two hours without moving or asking the students any questions, without changing even their facial expressions or tone of voice!"

"If they have no interest in studying, why do they work so hard to get into university in the first place? Just to meet the expectations of their parents or other people? It's just a waste of four years of time and money!" says St. Vincent's Jamali Jack, a student of Journalism and Mass Communication at Ming Chuan University, who has the same impression as Beardall. In his country, if young people don't want to study they just find jobs, where they can acquire skills and experience, so that they are just as competitive in the job market.