An analysis of school type and sources of funding in Taiwan's national higher education institutions: a resource dependence perspective

Since the Ministry of Education (MOE) in Taiwan mandated that public higher education institutions (HEIs) implement the University Fund system in 1996, generating operating income has become the responsibility of the administration of the individual public HEI. The ability to generate income from alternative sources affects the development of public HEIs. The purpose of this study is to use the resource dependence theory to investigate the University Fund sources at 49 Taiwanese national colleges and universities. This research will explore whether different type institutions (General or Technological) rely differently on each of the operating income sources, and whether the effects of Type of Institution, Year, Source of funding, and the interaction of Type of Institution, Year, and Source of Funding are significantly different on the dependence on operating income resource.

This study used archival data from the University Fund annual financial reports from the years 2001 to 2006 that are submitted to the MOE by the 49 national HEIs in Taiwan. To comprehensively examine the effects of variables of Type of Institution (General vs. Technological), Year (years from 2001 to 2006), and Source of Funding (tuition and fees, cooperative education income, extended education income, and government subsidies) on the dependence of the operating income resource, a repeated measures analysis of variance (ANOVA) with two within-subject factors, Year (6 levels) and Source of Funding (4 levels), and one between-subject factor of Type of Institution (2 levels) was conducted. The follow-up tests for the significant interaction effects and comparisons following up the significant main effects were computed. All tests were evaluated at the significance level of .05. The analysis provided information of both descriptive and inferential statistics to answer the research questions proposed.

The results indicated that the main effects of Year and Source of Funding and the interaction effects between Type of Institution and Source of Funding and between Year and Source of Funding were significant. The dependence order was the same for both types of HEI. The source of government subsidies was the highest, tuition and fees the second, cooperative education income the third, and extended education income the last among the four sources of funding. The dependence on operating income had significant change across the years 2001 to 2006 and revealed a decreasing trend in both types of HEIs as well as the national HEIs. The dependence on operating income resources revealed significantly different associations with the four sources of funding for national HEIs in Taiwan. General HEIs had higher dependence on cooperative and extended education income than did Technological HEIs, but General HEIs had lower dependence on tuition and fees than did the Technological HEIs. Both types of HEIs had the same dependence on government subsidies.