To help students from the families in the lowest 20% income group finish their studies and secure opportunities to pursue a brighter future, NCUE has formulated projects, actions, and guidance mechanisms to assist them in achieving their graduation goals.

NCUE integrates and coordinates resources: from Ministry of Education’s Higher Education Sprout Project to support students until graduation in the areas of daily life, learning, and careers. The details of the different guidance projects are as follows:

1. Daily life guidance and psychological care–NCUE’s Higher Education Sprout Project uses target-based learning to help students improve their conduct and planning skills in the course of serving others to develop their work abilities for employment. The Project offers students various forms of living assistance, including campus meal coupons and emergency aid, to ease their economic burdens. NCUE provides counselling resources and follow-up tracking to students with physical or mental disabilities, severe emotional distress, or special needs.

2. Learning guidance to identify the best students and assisting the competent ones–The Project helps students formulate learning plans and programmes, learn to allocate their time, and control their learning progress to enhance autonomous learning, cross-disciplinary learning, and learning guidance. NCUE provides diverse empowerment and learning advancement, competency objectives, and The Soaring Eagles Intensive Learning to the students’ knowledge, skills, and the scope of competency-based learning.

3. Career counselling that facilitates employment–By participating in empowerment lectures or training courses, the students are exposed to different issues and viewpoints to expand their outlook and develop their abilities through self-exploration and growth. The activities that enhance students’ career planning abilities include Creativity, Innovation, and Entrepreneurship (CIE) empowerment workshops, custom customizing résumés, and mock interviews.

4. Precise guidance, fostering students’ resilience (Figure 1): In addition to continuing to provide students with reviews, mock interviews and guidance, as well as career-related workshops. In the second phase of the project, we will adjust the capacity of "career orientation" counseling. This will expand from serving only disabled students with career orientation needs to encompass economically or culturally disadvantaged students on campus who also require career counseling and assessment. This will help a greater number of students in planning their future career directions.

In 2022, the Project’s 17 guidance projects helped 2,488 students, resulting in a disbursement of NT$12,284,000 in rewards. Learning guidance topped the list at 46.3%, followed by psychological guidance (29.5%), daily life guidance (22.5%), and career guidance (1.7%). NCUE also continued to improve the management mechanism of bursary projects, ensuring the students’ economic safety during their studies and helping them study at ease until graduation. The relevant issuance details are as shown in the following Table1, Figure 2 and Figure3.

Table 1. Expenditures for economically and culturally disadvantaged student rewards in 2022