1. Introduction
Nowadays, due to the rigorous lower global birthrates, many higher education institutions are confronting a survival ordeal. According to the 2019 annual report of U. S. News & World Report, the number of senior high school graduates in the USA is projected to decrease by 160,000, or 11% of the current total number of high school graduates. In Japan, the impact of the low-birthrate crisis is very severe with the number of registered students in Japanese private higher education institutions having decreased by 40% according to the Japanese Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology’s 2018 official report. Similarly, the low birthrate shock in South Korea has further resulted in not only 43 higher education institutions that are predictably going to be shut down by 2022, but up to 73 comprehensive four-year universities are also forecasted to be closed by 2024, according to the 2019 annual report of the Ministry of Education in South Korea. According to the latest annual higher education statistic report from the Taiwanese Ministry of Education, not only were up to 151 departments at public and private universities not able to recruit any senior higher school graduates, but the registration rate of 268 departments was 30% lower in 2019. Significantly, the recruiting in graduate programs is more like a baptism of fire because up to 64 graduate programs had a registration rate of zero. Furthermore, seven of these graduate programs, including art, drama, human society, ecology, creature evolution, translation, and social work are affiliated with National Taiwan University, which is the top ranked university in Taiwan. With respect to the foreign higher education recruiting challenge, the national higher education graduate employment austerity, and a rapid declining birthrate, a majority of higher education institutions have started to confront the recruiting insufficiency as unprecedented and unrepeatable threats. As a result, more and more talented students are choosing to study in well-known Asian branches of American universities such as New York University at Shanghai Campus, Kean University Campus in Wenzhou, Duke Kunshan University at Wuhan University, Bryant University-Beijing Institution of Technology at Zhuhai, Sichuan University-Pittsburgh Institution, John Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies at Nanjing Campus, University of Michigan-Shanghai Jiaotong University Joint Institution, or at higher international ranking universities such as University of Hong Kong, University of Singapore, Tsinghua University, Peking University, and so forth. According to the official Taiwanese Ministry of Education 2019 report, due to the impact of a rapid declining birthrate, the number of graduating high school students is predicted to be 157,000 in 2028, or a decline of 112,000 graduated high school students from 2015’s level of 269,000. In order to supply this enrollment insufficiency in Taiwanese higher education institutions, the Ministry of Education has instituted a series of educational strategies as documented in the New Southbound Policy for attracting foreign students. Presently, there are approximately 13,000 college freshmen from Malaysia, 7800 college freshmen from Vietnam, 7700 college freshmen from Hong Kong, 7300 college freshmen from Indonesia, and so on. Momentously, the registered number of complete Taiwanese higher education institutions was on average 83.9% in 2019, which means there are 16.1% (approximately 42,000 senior high graduates) that choose to register and study in foreign universities or that more and more senior high graduates did gradually deem that the higher education was not apparently able to cultivate and obtain for them enough employability after acquiring a higher education diploma.
In the past, a majority of administering authorities, professors, lecturers, faculties, and even government officers have traditionally and generally considered a higher education institution’s social impression, such as international ranking, to be able to not only directly and positively recruit outstanding student talent, but to also indirectly and proactively attract middle-level students. However, the majority of contemporary high school graduates are more focused on employability than an institution’s social impression when selecting a higher education institution to apply for. For the reason, “How to strengthen the students’ employability to attract more senior higher school graduates in order to advance the higher education institutions’ enrollment sustainability” has been a consistent topic of life and death for many higher education institutions in this era of a swift declining birthrate [
1,
2,
3]. Remarkably, there were 114,863 (41.75%) senior high school graduates registered in technology related departments, such as the department of information management, department of technological management, department of information engineering, and so on, at higher education institutions. The number of senior high school graduates who registered in technology-related departments increased to 171,648 (54.6%) in 2019. The reason is that contemporary high school students are already accustomed to and dependent on technological channels to obtain news, information, and knowledge through manipulating 3C (Computer, Communication, Consumer electronics) electronic devices with technological functional platforms, such as the Google search-engine, YouTube videos, Facebook, Instagram, and so forth, due to the expeditious hardware and software developments of telecommunication and wireless technologies. Further, the Ministry of Education has also instituted a series of “technology education” programs, such as STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math), in the Curriculum Guidelines of 12-Year Basic Education General Guidelines in order to cultivate higher employability among university and college students. Critically, in order to investigate this dramatic tendency of senior higher school graduates, “How to explore the technology education to attract more senior higher school graduates in order to advance the institutions’ enrollment sustainability” and “Is there any correlationships between technology education and students’ employability from institutions’ enrollment sustainability” have been empirical and important issues for the current higher education institutions.
After reviewing a series of comprehensive published studies on the relative research topics of technology education, students’ employability, and higher education enrollment sustainability, some research [
4,
5,
6,
7] indicated that curriculum content and evaluation [
8] and University Social Responsibility (USR) [
9] are the two most critical factors for higher education institutions’ enrollment sustainability. Some researches induced that students’ organizational ability [
10,
11], planning techniques [
12], and presentative skills were the three most crucial individual competences for employment [
13]. However, no researcher has directly been able to complete an in-depth and in-detail assay of the cross-analytical correlationships among these three research fields: technology education [
14,
15,
16,
17,
18], students’ employability [
19,
20,
21,
22,
23,
24], and institutions’ enrollment sustainability in order to induce the best solution of the above-listed three mainstream research questions of current higher education enrollment sustainability. In order to effectively and interdisciplinarily explore the interactive correlationships among technology education, students’ employability, and institutions’ developmental stainability, this research comprehensively employed the essential core perspectives (individualism, organizationism, and socializationism) of the Social Cognitive Theory (SCT) to comprehensively assay the interactive dependences and influences among technology education, students’ employability, and institutions’ developmental stainability (as shown in
Figure 1). This approach was performed because (1) individualism (students) was able to directly affect the organizationism (higher education institutions) and socializationism (society) perspective as the individual was the basic unit for organization and society; (2) organization indirectly impacted the individual and society as it is necessary for humans to live in groups and majority decisions exist in society; (3) socializationism reversely influences an organization and the individual since majority rule always dominates individual thinking and organizational development [
25]. Therefore, students’ employability presents the individual competences in employment that belongs to the individualism perspective of SCT, the organizationism perspective of SCT was applied to discuss institutions’ developmental sustainability, and the socializationism perspective of SCT was able to illustrate socialization media technology in higher education. Subsequently, not only was the Factor Analysis (FA) approach of quantitative analysis able to be first employed in the appraised execution of large-scale, weighted results from questionnaires completed from random university and college students and faculties with higher research validity and representativeness [
26,
27], but the Entropy Analysis (EA) model of qualitative analysis was also able to be secondly applied in the evaluated implementation of professional weighted results from the questionnaires completed from interdisciplinary experts in students’ employability, institutions’ developmental sustainability, and technology education [
28,
29] to enhance the research reliability, reproducibility, and accuracy, as illustrated in
Figure 1.
5. Conclusions and Recommendations
Nowadays, with respect to the rapid development of technology education, the rigorous issue of students’ employability, and the swift awareness of USR, many higher education institutions have necessarily devoted themselves to discovering the most effective sustainable strategies to survive this hyper-competitive and low birth rate era. Therefore, this research creatively not only employed SCT to interdisciplinarily and mutually assay the correlationships among technology education, students’ employability, and institutions’ developmental sustainability, but it also applied the FA approach and the EA model to comprehensively perform an in-depth analysis of the results from the large-scale questionnaire administered to experts in order to delve into the most critical determinants of technology education and student-employability to advance higher education sustainability. As a result, three brief research questions were completely solved by the evaluated consequences of the consolidation of the FA approach of quantitative analysis and the EA model of qualitative analysis and then, the three significant interdisciplinary conclusions are described as follows:
- (1)
CEA and SCC of WHAOTF, IIUOTF, and CUCTF of technology education were directly able to advance the “Diminishing Poverty (DP)” of higher education institutions sustainability. Therefore, not only CEA and SCC are necessary to be covered into the core cultivating literacies in higher education curriculums, but wide-spreading hardware accessibility openness, information immediacy usability openness, and concurrent usages convenience technological features are also necessary to be designed into the essential operation functions of technology education of higher education institutions for facilitating social impression in order to attract more high school graduates to advance higher education enrollment sustainability. Specifically, the majority of high school and higher education institution students both want the higher education institution to necessarily provide CUCTF and IIUOTF with WHAOTF in its technology education system to SCC and CEA of their graduate employability in order to solve vital societal issues in relation with the increment of “Diminishing Poverty (DP)” of higher education institutions’ USR for promising social impression in order to encourage more senior high school graduates to advance higher education enrollment sustainability.
- (2)
AAA and PSA of CPTA and CATF of technology education were mutually able to proceed FEE of higher education institutions’ sustainability. Precisely, the majority of senior high school and university and college students request that higher education institutions offer CPTA in its technology education structure to nurture AAA and PSA of their graduate employability in order to clear up Employment and Economy material society-problems in connection with the addition of FEE of higher education institutions’ USR in order to allure more senior high school graduates to advance higher education enrollment sustainability.
- (3)
PC of students’ employability and CTAS of MGME of higher education institutions’ sustainability. Significantly, the majority of senior high school and higher education institution students commonly accede that higher education institution need to supply CTAS in its technology education design in order to straighten out Education Equitable critical society questions in association with the elevation of MEME of higher education institutions’ USR.
The most valuable finding of this research directly addressed that “poverty, unemployment, and educational equitability” have been the three most materially considered issues by students during their higher education institution selection process. Furthermore, higher education institutions necessarily develop CUCTF and IIUOTF, and CPTA and CTAS to strengthen students’ employability SCC and CEA, and AAA and PSA to strengthen their graduate’s advantages in the employment market for advancing “poverty, unemployment, and educational equitability” of USR in higher education institutions.
Specifically, the most significant contribution of this research was to not only academically resupply the interdisciplinary research with an in-depth and in-detail assay into the interactive correlationships among technology education, students’ employability, and higher education enrollment sustainability in the future, but also to empirically provide concrete suggestions developing the most core sustainable strategies of higher education institutions. In addition to practically offering valuable research findings to governmental education departments to institute the most effective and useful policies to enable current higher education institutions to delve into the most critical determinants of students’ employability in technology education and to advance higher education enrollment sustainability. Ultimately, as for the research limitations, the number of questionnaire collections in this research was planning to add more evaluated methods, such as multiple criteria decision making (MCDM) methods in correlation with the highest research validity, reliability, accuracy, etc.