Demographic Change and Higher Education Governance: Evidence from Departmental Restructuring and Enrollment Dynamics in Taiwan’s TVET Institutions

Key findings from this study

• The study found that departmental renaming is the only restructuring strategy consistently associated with improved enrollment performance, particularly in private TVET institutions.
• The researchers demonstrate that mergers generally fail to generate positive enrollment effects despite their prevalence as institutional adjustment strategies.
• The authors report that newly established programs and quota expansions perform well when implemented in fields with strong labor market demand, specifically healthcare and applied technologies sectors.

Overview

This longitudinal study examines departmental restructuring strategies implemented across Taiwan's technological and vocational education and training (TVET) sector in response to demographic decline. The research analyzes 1087 restructuring cases across 74 TVET institutions between 2020 and 2024, utilizing five nationwide administrative datasets. The institutional context involves pronounced demographic pressures from declining birthrates that threaten enrollment stability and program sustainability, particularly within the TVET sector's reliance on consistent freshman cohort intake. The study evaluates five primary restructuring approaches: renaming, mergers, additions, closures, and quota expansions, employing fixed-effects regression models and multi-year enrollment trend analyses to assess their differential impacts on enrollment outcomes.

Methods and approach

The study employs a longitudinal analytical design utilizing five nationwide administrative datasets covering the 2020-2024 period. Fixed-effects regression models are deployed to isolate the causal effects of departmental restructuring strategies while controlling for institution-specific and temporal factors. Multi-year enrollment trend analyses complement the regression approach, enabling examination of sustained enrollment patterns preceding and following restructuring interventions. The sample comprises 1087 documented restructuring cases across 74 TVET institutions, providing systematic coverage of the institutional population. Stratified analysis by institutional sector (public and private) and program field (healthcare, applied technologies, and others) enables assessment of differential efficacy across institutional contexts and disciplinary domains.

Results

Departmental renaming emerges as the sole restructuring strategy demonstrating consistent positive association with improved freshman enrollment performance, with pronounced effects observed in private institutions. Mergers generally fail to produce positive enrollment effects, suggesting limited efficacy of consolidation approaches in the TVET context. Departmental closures concentrate among programs exhibiting sustained low enrollment trajectories across multiple years, indicating that closures follow rather than precede enrollment deterioration. Newly established programs and quota expansions demonstrate relatively strong enrollment performance when aligned with fields exhibiting robust labor market demand, particularly healthcare and applied technology sectors. The differentiated outcomes across institutional sectors indicate that restructuring strategy efficacy varies by institutional type, with private institutions showing notably greater enrollment responsiveness to renaming interventions.

Implications

The findings establish that departmental renaming functions as a viable institutional governance tool for enrollment management within the TVET sector, particularly for private institutions seeking to respond to demographic pressures. The modest efficacy of mergers suggests that consolidation strategies require more substantial pedagogical or structural transformation to generate enrollment benefits, or that enrollment challenges reflect factors beyond organizational form. The concentration of closures among programs with sustained low enrollment indicates that institutions employ closure as a terminal intervention following extended periods of insufficient enrollment, rather than as a proactive adjustment mechanism.

Scope and limitations

This summary is based on the study abstract and available metadata. It does not include a full analysis of the complete paper, supplementary materials, or underlying datasets unless explicitly stated. Findings should be interpreted in the context of the original publication.