Do you want to be a graduate student? According to a recent report released in Career Magazine, the number of in-school graduate students increase from 50,000 to 160,000 in the past five years. This increase has broken the world record and impacts both to university and graduate students. And, it affects the employee market because one undergraduate student required vacancy will attract more graduate students to compete for. In this article, I am going to summarize and analyze the major challenges a graduate student might face in the educational and social activities.
             The number of graduate schools in Taiwan has been increasing rapidly in recent years. There were near 800 postgraduate courses in 1998, and by 2003, according to a report by Ministry of Education, the number of postgraduate courses more than doubled its size, reaching to 2200. However, although the competition among schools seems more severe (normally regarded as benefiting students), the school administers as well as students are facing the constraints of budget limits and unbalanced resource. Graduate students in Taiwan, previously only had to worry about what they were planning to do in their research; nevertheless, graduate students nowadays have to worry whether their school is rich enough to provide them with qualified labs, librarian resources, sometimes, even qualified faculty. Hence, to do their research within this kind of circumstances, especially for individuals with less resource will be a substantial challenge for them. .
             There are multiple reasons for one to choose postgraduate study as an option in Taiwan, but some reasons are more positive than others. Some pick it purely out of academic interest heading for an academic career, others do it just to put off choosing an occupation; some begin postgraduate studies because it helps to stand out from the crowd and get a better job, and still others, which attracts cautions, make their decision to meet...