As part of a drive to reform the nation”s colleges and funding for higher education, DPP lawmakers welcomed a wide range of national representatives to an open forum on higher education today. Criticisms were raised over a government plan to distribute NT$500 million over 5 years to top local universities, while private university students issued their own separate calls for institutional reform. About a dozen students at private universities were outside the Legislature’s forum on higher education today, demanding that the proceedings of private school board meetings be made more transparent and available to the public.Lin Tzu-mengPrivate Schools Reform Action CoalitionWe want private universities across the board to appoint directors and supervisors working for the general good, on the way to implementing public oversight.While students outside the meeting were calling for reform, the plans discussed in the forum, such as an official plan to allot the nation’s top universities NT$500 million over 5 years, struck many in attendance as a reflection of the government’s unequal distribution of education funding. Wu Szu-yaoDPP LegislatorSome of the top schools get a whole lot, while many schools whose development urgently requires policy intervention are always left wanting. Before the meeting, DPP organizers took the opportunity to explain the meaning of deliberative democracy, in an attempt to solicit public opinion on how to allocate education funding and how to implement future reforms of the college system.The forum was also broadcast online, as a way of helping to gather even more diverse opinions on how to fix the nation’s higher education system.