Decentralization of higher education and its implications for educational autonomy in Taiwan

This article primarily aims to investigate the effects of decentralization on educational autonomy in Taiwan through historical and documentary analysis. To draw an analytical framework, it begins with a brief examination of the concept of autonomy. This is followed by an examination of how decentralization has influenced the state-institution-individual relationship in Taiwan's higher education by using a three-level hierarchical model. After analyzing decentralization as empowering practices, it argues that the emergence of a performativity culture has generated an antinomy of the decentralization reforms, in which decentralization has formed a new ecology of education administration in Taiwan on the one hand, and simultaneously has brought the issue of bureaucratization in education on the other. Copyright © 2010 National Institute of Education, Singapore.