Numbers of Taiwanese Students Obtaining Student Visas from Foreign Countries in 2018

Post date: Aug 16, 2019 6:35:44 AM

This July, the Ministry of Education (MOE) released the number of Taiwanese students obtaining student visas from foreign countries in 2018

Key Findings:

• • Overall, the number of Taiwanese students getting new/ renewal student visas grew 2.7%. Regardless the birth rate has dropped ever since 1979, now only a third, 7%, of what back then, the visa number has been stably increasing since 2012, compared to which is about 43% higher, and the growth rate is about 22% in the last decade.

  • The ranking is pretty much similar over the last decade, as U.S. continues to be the most popular destination, followed by Australia, Japan, U.K., Canada, Germany, France, then New Zealand.

• Though US continues to be the top with 13,000 new visas issued, the number has been dropping, about 16% lower for the last decade.

  • Japan's figure keeps increasing might because of the government subsidiary from 2014 and its project of "300,000 international students by 2020" as well as the heat of inter-country exchange and recruitment among Asian schools.

  • In terms of each country's representing % of the total visas issued, you can see the increasing of diversity. Back in 2009, U.S. dominated the market with almost half of the total, while over 90% of the visas were issued by the top 8 countries, and nearly 80% (78.66%) were to English speaking countries, U.S, U.K., Australia, Canada, and New Zealand. 10 years later, now, U.S. got less than a third (31.64%), and the percentage of English speaking countries is 65% while that of "Other Countries" doubled from 7.45% to 14.22%. Germany, Australia, Japan, as well as Canada are still on the rise.

  • Taiwan is still a very strong market for study abroad if you measure it on a per capita basis. Take the U.S. for example, in 2018, Taiwan ranked number 7 in terms of places of origin for international students studying in the United States, following China, India, South Korea, Saudi Arabia, Canada, and Vietnam. However, what the data is showing us is that Taiwanese today are considering a broader range of options than just US, UK, Canada & Australia, expanded to countries in Europe and Asia.

  • We feel that the increase in student enrollment to Canada, Australia and Japan, especially Australia, is the direct result of the working holiday program between these countries and Taiwan. The data shows a "spillover" effect from the working holiday scheme. Students tend to go over to these countries through the Working Holiday scheme, then they decide that they would like to stay there a bit longer and some of them stay on to pursue more education and eventually, the students may eventually choose to immigrate there.

Interested in more information about recruiting in Taiwan? Please contact us at tina@envisionrecruit.com.

Below is the total number of Taiwanese students studying abroad, with updates for France number, for your reference.