The Intensity and Forms of Collaboration between Czech and Taiwanese universities

Recently, interactions between the Czech Republic and Taiwan in the business, tourism, and academic spheres have intensified following joint efforts by the governments of both countries. The article aims to evaluate the collaboration of Czech universities with their Taiwanese university partners. Specifically, the analyses focus on the intensity and forms of the collaboration and interrogate whether there are patterns regarding the type and size of the Czech universities. Forms of collaboration are defined as exchange of students, exchange of academics and joint projects. The dataset was derived from published long-term plans, internationalisation strategies, action plans, and university websites of 26 Czech public universities. The results indicate that student exchange is the most common form of cooperation between Czech and Taiwanese universities, followed by academic exchange. Joint projects appear to be a challenging and less frequent form of cooperation. Compared to other Czech universities, technical universities cooperate more intensively with Taiwanese partners (in all areas). Large and medium-large sized Czech universities intensively collaborate in all areas with Taiwanese universities. The intensity of collaboration between small and small-medium sized Czech universities and Taiwanese universities in rather low, except of the exchange of students that is moderate. These results can guide the policy makers when designing better internationalisation policies in higher education.