After graduating from National Tainan Girls’ Senior High School in the southern city of Tainan in 2013, Shih Fang-yu (施芳愉) decided to enroll in the Department of Police Administration at Taiwan Police College (TPC) in Taipei. Whereas in the past this would have been considered a somewhat unusual career choice for a graduate of one of the nation’s most prestigious high schools, today Shih is among a growing number of talented students who are opting to apply to one of Taiwan’s two police academies. “Many of my college classmates were offered places at top universities, but they chose TPC instead,” she notes.
More than 60 percent of the approximately 2,000 students who were recruited by the academy in 2013 for its two-year police training programs had been accepted by other colleges or universities or had previously studied at other tertiary institutions, TPC statistics show. Joseph Jiang (江政邑), who is also studying in the Department of Police Administration, is a university graduate and worked for an accounting firm before enrolling in TPC. He decided to change careers due to the lack of interpersonal interactions at his old desk job, while Shih chose the tuition-free TPC chiefly to lessen the financial burden that her tertiary studies would place on her family. After graduating from the college and serving in the police force for a year or two, Shih hopes to complete another two years of study at the nation’s other academy, Central Police University (CPU), in order to earn a bachelor’s degree.
CPU, which is located in northern Taiwan’s Taoyuan City, is the country’s highest level institution for police education, awarding undergraduate, master’s and doctoral degrees. The university also functions as a think tank where policing experts and scholars conduct research in fields such as immigration, law enforcement technology, and police and traffic administration.
In recent years, CPU has also seen increasingly fierce competition for the approximately 300 undergraduate places it offers annually. The university typically accepts only around 10 percent of applicants, while the admission rate is usually less than 15 percent at TPC. “Seventy percent of our students could have entered one of Taiwan’s top five universities,” says CPU President Tiao Chien-sheng (刁建生), who is himself a graduate of the police university and also holds a master’s degree in political science from National Taiwan University (NTU) in Taipei.
CPU students Gao Siou-wun (高琇紋), Lin Yu-lun (林煜倫) and Wu Chia-yu (吳家宇) were offered places at National Chengchi University in Taipei, National Chiao Tung University in northern Taiwan’s Hsinchu City, and NTU, respectively, but opted instead to enroll in the police academy. Gao is studying in the Department of Foreign Affairs Police, Lin in the Department of Traffic Science, and Wu in the Department of Forensic Science. The latter department is the only one of its kind in Taiwan’s tertiary education system, and regularly sends students to the University of New Haven in the United States to study under Henry Lee (李昌鈺), a CPU graduate and one of the world’s leading forensic scientists.
Like Shih, Lin’s reasons for enrolling in CPU were financial. TPC and CPU offer free tuition to students as long as they pass the annual police civil service examination within three years of graduation and then serve for at least four years and six years, respectively. Wu echoes Jiang’s motivations for pursuing a career in policing, noting that he enjoys meeting people from different walks of life. Meanwhile, Gao was inspired to attend CPU by her police officer father. After serving in the police force for six or more years, she plans to earn a law degree and become a defense attorney or prosecutor. “Accumulating a lot of law enforcement experience is quite helpful if you want to pursue a career in the legal profession,” she notes.
CPU students listen to instructions as they prepare for a firearms training class. (Photo by Huang Chung-hsin)
While CPU serves as a university and research institute for policing, TPC functions on the junior college level. “Our role is like that of a vocational school in the regular education system,” explains TPC President Chen Lien-chen (陳連禎), a CPU graduate who also holds a master’s degree in public administration and policy from National Taipei University.
TPC traces its origins back to a training institute for police and prison officers that was established in 1898 during Japanese colonial rule (1895–1945). In October 1945, soon after Taiwan was returned to the Republic of China, this institute became the Taiwan Provincial Police Training Facilities, before being renamed the Taiwan Provincial Police Academy in 1948. The term “provincial” was dropped from the title in 1986, and two years later it was renamed TPC.
CPU was founded in Nanjing, mainland China in 1936 as the Central Police College. It was relocated to Taiwan along with the Nationalist government in 1949, though the school did not reopen until 1954. It was renamed CPU more than four decades later in 1995. Previously, both police academies were located on Guangzhou Street in western Taipei. In 1968, the junior college moved to its present site in Wenshan District in the south of the capital, while CPU moved to Guishan Township in Taoyuan County, now Guishan District in Taoyuan City, in 1977.
Graduates of the two schools must pass the police civil service exam, which is organized annually by the Ministry of Examination (MOEX), before they are able to take up positions in government agencies. Successful examinees are assigned to the National Police Agency, Coast Guard Administration, fire departments or other government units responsible for matters such as corrections, immigration or national security.
Over the decades, TPC and CPU have had a substantial impact on Taiwan’s development. In particular, Tiao notes that graduates played a crucial role in the nation’s transition to a liberal democratic society. “As the military was not allowed to intervene,” he recalls, referring to large-scale street protests in the late 1970s, “the police were solely responsible for ensuring the safety of those who took part in the mass gatherings.” In 1987, almost four decades of martial-law rule came to an end and the country embarked on the path toward full democratization. Throughout this process and the subsequent transitions of power between the two major political parties in 2000 and 2008, the police were an essential stabilizing force, Tiao says.
Chen points out that the police force’s role has changed considerably since the end of martial-law rule. “In the past, the focus was solely on law enforcement and the maintenance of national and social security,” he explains. “However, now there is also a significant emphasis on serving the wider needs of the community.”
Around 10 percent of the students at TPC are women. (Photo courtesy of Taiwan Police College)
Due to the inherent dangers that come with policing, the TPC president says that subjects such as judo, taekwondo and wrestling—in addition to firearms training—form a significant part of the education programs at the police academies. In addition, the heads of both schools emphasize that students are required to foster strong ethical values and mental resilience. Both academies also encourage students to develop wide-ranging knowledge. CPU has offered courses in the liberal arts and humanities through its general education center since 1996, while TPC opened a similar facility to teach such subjects last year.
In 1997, a major change in the way that the nation recruits police officers was enacted. For the first time, the MOEX-organized police civil service examination was opened to applicants who had not graduated from TPC or CPU. This new policy was aimed at diversifying the academic backgrounds of police officers. However, the new policy proved controversial as there was a decrease in the recruitment of TPC and CPU graduates.
Failure to pass the police civil service examination within three years of graduation has serious consequences for former students of the police academies as they are required to pay tuition for the time they spent in the institutions. Furthermore, male graduates are exempt from compulsory military service if they pass the exam within three years of finishing their studies, but must complete their term of service if they fail to get through the recruitment process within this period.
In 2011, a new two-track recruitment system was introduced that sets separate examinations for those who have graduated from the police academies and those who have not attended the schools, and the number of jobs on offer is divided roughly equally between the two groups. Today, most of the examinees from TPC and CPU pass their version of the exam, while the recruitment rate in the other group is far lower as a much higher number of people take the test.
Chen and Tiao agree that the new system offers the best of both worlds as it allows the two academies to provide the core of the police force, while also promoting greater academic diversity among law enforcement officials. Tiao believes that considering police officers’ unique status as “gun-carrying civil servants,” it is better to put them in a specialized educational environment at a young age. “When you’re 18, you’re entering a crucial period of your life,” he says. “Because our students begin their studies at this formative stage, I believe they’re better prepared for the demanding job of being a police officer.”
Write to Pat Gao at cjkao@mofa.gov.tw