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.

Through the Higher Education Sprout Project, NCUE offers a comprehensive student guidance system, integrating and coordinating relevant resources to support students in successfully completing their studies. This support covers areas such as daily life, academics, career planning, and targeted guidance. The details of the various support initiatives are as follows:

1. Daily life guidance and counseling—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 counseling 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 focuses on helping students formulate learning plans and pathways, manage their time effectively, and keep track of their learning progress to enhance autonomous learning, cross-disciplinary learning, and academic guidance. It includes initiatives such as foundational knowledge enhancement, generalist training, international competence development, and research projects, aimed at extending the depth and breadth of students' learning experiences.

3. Career counseling that facilitates employment—Assist students in formulating personal future plans and developing customized guidance and support programs to promote career exploration and competency preparation. This includes career orientation and one-on-one career counseling, enhancing students' abilities in career planning and direction.

4. Precise guidance, fostering students’ resilience (Figure 1): In addition to continuing to provide students with résumé reviews, mock interviews and guidance, as well as career-related workshops, we adjusted the capacity of "career orientation" counseling in the second phase. 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 careers.

Figure 1. Targeted Counseling Concepts

In 2023, the Project’s 12 guidance sub-projects helped 2,290 students, resulting in a disbursement of NTD$12,189,000 in rewards. “Learning guidance” topped the list at 58.21%, followed by “psychological guidance” (25.37%), “daily life guidance” (14.93%), and “career guidance” (1.48%). 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 Table 1, Figure 2, and Figure 3.

Table 1. Expenditures for economically and culturally disadvantaged student rewards in 2023

Figure 2. Comparison of Counseling Sessions for Economically Disadvantaged Students in 2022 and 2023

Figure 3. Comparison of Counseling Scholarships for Economically Disadvantaged Students in 2022 and 2023