President Ma Ying-jeou met on the morning of November 20 with the recently inaugurated president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) L. Rafael Reif and Mrs. Reif. President Ma, on behalf of the government and people of the ROC, expressed a cordial welcome to President and Mrs. Reif, and also expressed his hopes for a continued strengthening of academic interaction and cooperation between Taiwan and the United States.
In remarks, President Ma commented that MIT has consistently been one of the world's leaders in innovation and technology. To this point, MIT has produced 77 Nobel laureates, he said, adding that it is the premier science and technology research-oriented university in the United States. In addition, the university is home to nearly 100 laboratories, providing facilities for top talent from throughout the world, he noted. MIT encourages academic research and also strives to solve many problems facing humankind, he said. Last year alone, the university was responsible for over 600 important inventions and generated US$85 million in licensing fees. It is a prime model for cooperation between the academic and industrial sectors, the president remarked.
President Ma stated that alumni from MIT have founded over 25,800 companies and created over 3.3 million jobs at enterprises that generate annual revenues of some US$2 trillion, making MIT a great contributor in this regard in the United States and the world. The Epoch Foundation which was jointly created by Taiwan and MIT continues to promote innovation within the academic community here and runs the Young Entrepreneurs of the Future program. To date, nearly 2,000 individuals involved in innovation and entrepreneurship are affiliated with the Epoch Foundation, and the organization has helped over 20 students establish start-ups. President Ma said he is confident that these individuals will help to create an even more prosperous future for Taiwan's industry.
The president mentioned that in 1999 MIT introduced the concept of using the Internet as a learning aid. In 2000, it began providing classes online free of charge, and in 2002 it formally introduced its OpenCourseWare (OCW) to make the content of 50 classes available online, he said. By November 2007, the content of over 1,800 courses was available via OCW. In the United States, on average these courses receive one million visits a month, while translations receive 500,000 more. This not only highlights the important role that MIT plays in open education, but also the pioneering role of MIT in the history of education, he remarked.
President Ma noted that President Reif previously served as the provost of MIT, and during his tenure in that post made every effort to promote the MITx online open learning platform. At the same time, MIT has cooperated with Harvard University, the University of California at Berkeley, and the University of Texas System in jointly introducing the edX program, which seeks to be "The Future of Online Education for Anyone, Anywhere and Anytime." President Ma explained that over 30 years ago when he was studying at Harvard Law School, he took a course entitled Ocean Engineering and Law, which had been jointly developed by Harvard and MIT. This shows the longstanding commitment of MIT to cooperation with other schools, he said.
The president stressed that the Ministry of Education and MIT are presently promoting a cooperation project under which Ph.D. candidates and post-doctoral students will be sent to MIT to carry out advanced research. President Ma said he hopes that this program will help to further forge academic interaction and cooperation between Taiwan and the United States.
In addition to President and Mrs. Reif, the delegation included MIT Vice President for Resource Development Jeff Newton, Director of the MIT Office of Global Initiatives Arundhati Tuli Banerjee, and Epoch Foundation Chairman Barry Lam (林百里) and President Paul Hsu (徐小波). The group was escorted to the Presidential Office by Minister of Education Chiang Wei-ling (蔣偉寧) to meet President Ma. Also attending the meeting was National Security Council Secretary-General Jason C. Yuan (袁健生).