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. The measures are as follows:

1.NCUE provides all-round support to the students through the Higher Education Sprout Project, whose 18 projects in four dimensions benefitted 2,113 students in 2021.

Under the Higher Education Sprout Project, disadvantaged students can receive all-round guidance in four dimensions: daily life, psychology, learning, and careers. In 2021, the Project’s 15 guidance projects helped 2,409 students; learning guidance topped the list at 55%, followed by psychological guidance (18%), career guidance (21%), and daily life guidance (6%). 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.

2.NCUE integrates and coordinates resources to support students until graduation in the areas of daily life, learning, and careers.

The details of the different guidance projects are as follows:

2.1 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. They provide counselling resources and follow-up tracking to students with physical or mental disabilities, severe emotional distress, or special needs.

2.2 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. It provides diverse empowerment and learning advancement, competency objectives, and Flying Eagle Intensive Learning to the students’ knowledge, skills, and the scope of competency-based learning.

2.3 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 résumés, and mock interviews.

2.4 Targeted counseling that builds up students’ resilience: We provide individualized and targeted counseling to accompany and guide students through the depression period in the following ways:

A. Diagnosis: We offer general tests and theme-specific class-based counseling to first-year students to help them adapt to college life. For sophomore students and above, we examine their physical and mental adjustment status through physical and psychological tests to provide necessary counseling resources.

B. Prediction: Based on the concept of three-level counseling, we learn about students’ needs through psychological test results or physical and psychological examinations and preliminary interviews, and then screen out students with high demands for caring counseling (including suicide risk, psychological adjustment issues, mental illness), and eventually provide a comprehensive counseling mechanism for these students. Additionally, students with other counseling needs, such as academic empowerment or life assistance, are also offered aid in referral counseling.

C. Counseling: Through general testing or interviews, students at high risk are screened for individualized counseling to establish a case management mechanism. Each student with high demands for caring counseling will be followed up and consulted by a designated psychologist regularly to keep track of the student’s physical and mental status. We also participate in departmental meetings to assist teachers in the department in providing timely care for students and provide comprehensive support to achieve the goal of “continuous care and concern” by connecting or aligning vertical and horizontal care.

D. Prevention: Through the “Resilience Training Program,” a dedicated psychologist guides the development of inner resources required for resilience to assist students with high needs for caring in developing resilience in the face of adversity and constructing students’ inner resources. Moreover, external environmental support is provided to guide students toward developing their own capability to counteract risk factors and increase protective factors in times of adversity or stress, aiming to enhance their resilience. Moreover, through a project subsidized by the Ministry of Education, peer counselors are assigned to each class as “suicide prevention gatekeepers.” Through training courses, each gatekeeper plays a “caring and supportive” role, providing timely encouragement and resources to help their peers. Additionally, the “Shaping a Friendly and Safe Campus” is created by creating caring-themed posters and initiating a care mechanism between departmental teachers, Student Affairs Section , and family members to create a safety net to accompany and guide students through the depression period.

Photo: Targeted Counseling Concepts