Who are NTU Students?-Differences across Ethnic and Gender Groups and Urban/Rural Discrepancy

Using student records between 1954 and 2000, this paper investigates the gender, ethnic and urban/rural composition of NTU students, and discusses the selection effect of the University Entrance Examination. First, the proportion of female students has been fairly close to that of male students since the late 1960s. This differs from the gender composition of college students generally for which female students consist of a smaller but increasing proportion of the student population. Second, 36% of NTU students are Mainlanders. Although the gap between Mainlanders and Taiwanese has decreased, it is still significant. Being a mainlander increase one’s prospects of becoming an NTU student more than it increases the prospect of simply becoming a college student. For the years 1997-2000, compared to a national average of 0.89%, the probability of becoming a NTU student for an 18-year-old in Taipei city is 3.06%, while the probability for Ta-An district is 6.10% and only 0.19% for Taitung county. The variation of the likelihood of entering NTU among counties is greater that that of entering colleges. In fact, the competition begins at an earlier stage where 82% of NTU students are from the top 20 senior high schools. In addition, regression results show that aggregate county level data can explain less that one-fifth of the variation. Moreover, data for the current students and the 18-to-22-year-old population, parents of NTU students are much better educated and are much more likely to be government employees, In contrast to the fact that college tuition is negatively associated with the examination scores, the probability of entering NTU is positively associated with family background. This casts doubts on the equity of college education in Taiwan.