TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — Following Harvard’s decision to move its Mandarin summer program from Beijing to Taipei, the Ministry of Education (MOE) has said there are 21 other American universities that have partnered up with Taiwan schools for Mandarin language education.

Among them are the University of California, Los Angeles, University of Southern California, and Penn State. They have signed agreements with National Taiwan Normal University, while National Tsinghua University has linked up with MIT, Duke University, and other prestigious schools, UDN reported.

As China’s Confucius Institutes are losing prominence and shutting down, the MOE has invested NT$45 million (US$1.6 million) to implement its "Excellent Mandarin Language Program.” Under this initiative, it will send 36 teachers from 10 Taiwan universities to teach in the U.S. and invite 168 American students to Taiwan to study Mandarin.

Despite this boost in Mandarin education funding, teachers who were selected to teach abroad have said the subsidies provided by the MOE are still too low. Some Taiwan university officials have also said that negotiating teacher salaries with the U.S. is a huge challenge, per UDN.

Whichever American school is looking to hire Mandarin teachers should pay their salaries, the officials said. However, U.S. universities have grown accustomed to cooperating with their Chinese counterparts, as they always offered favorable conditions to make the American side believe that it does not need to spend a lot of money to recruit Mandarin teachers, they said.

In response to these complaints, the MOE’s Department of International and Cross-Strait Education said that teaching is a process that requires “learning while doing,” and there is always room for improvement.

In the future, the MOE intends to have Mandarin teachers take supplementary courses to help improve their teaching skills and increase their willingness to teach abroad, according to UDN.

The MOE’s Department of International Affairs said the education ministry has set up a subsidy program for Mandarin teachers abroad, providing them US$1,200 per month for living expenses and additional expenses based on local prices to cover airfare and teaching materials.