Asia University (AU) holds a Nobel Laureate Forum on May 28, 2019. In this year, the forum invited 2018 Nobel Laureate in Economics, Dr. Paul M. Romer, to share his experiences with professors and students of AU. Dr. Romer said that young people are the sources of innovation ideas, and educations should encourage the young generation to be brave to try. He also encouraged all students of AU to think out of the box and to seek social developments and innovations.

AU and Economy Daily News co-organized this 2019 Nobel Laureate Forum; AU President, Jeffrey J. P. Tsai, leads the Vice-President of AU, Grace Lin, the Deputy Dean of the College of Management at AU, Jenho-Peter Ou, and students from AU and allied high schools, which include Taichung First Senior High School, Taichung Girl’s Senior High School, and Wen-Hua Senior High School, to participate the forum. These students took this opportunity to ask a number of questions which included the US-China trade war, the cryptocurrency, the advantages and disadvantages of new technology such as social media and cyber-attacks, the charter cities, the online education platform, and the immigration policy, etc.

President Tsai points out that AU attempts to cultivate the international outlook of students and help them to follow the trend of world developments. In the past nine years, AU has invited sixteen Nobel Prize winners to the school to give speeches to the students and faculty members of AU. The aim of these events is to inspire the participants to build wider international outlooks and life goals through the different angles of professions and life experiences from these masters. Furthermore, President Tsai expressed that by holding the Nobel Laureate Forum, AU hopes to encourage the individual, the school, even the entire country to look higher and move farther.

A student of Taichung First Senior High School, Hou Yu-ren, asked Prof. Romer for his opinion on the policy of the Belt and Road Initiative of China. Prof. Romer answered he believes that in general, close connections between cities will bring positive influences of economic developments. The following question was from a student of Taichung Girl’s Senior High School, Lin Tzu-yu. She raised an issue of charter cities  - why people choose to start from a new land, but not to seek development chances from existing cities? The master responded that to boost the development of a new city is like to urge an innovation company which can energize the entire economy with less limitations; in the meantime, it can attract new immigrations to move into new places.

An international student of AU from Indonesia, Onnavia Laura, questioned, “the popularity rate of technology in Indonesia is low. How can people use the new technology to drive the domestic economy? Moreover, what approach should the government of Indonesia take for the country to avoid becoming a victim of the next financial crisis?” Prof. Romer said directly that Rome is not built in one day, and the development of technology need take step by step to achieve the goal.

During the forum, a student from the Department of Healthcare Administration of AU, Tang Ya-lan, asked, “the decrease of the population has become a common issue in many countries, and it brought economic shocks to the regions. How can people solve the impact of the above situation?” Prof. Romer shared that, from his viewpoint, the current problems that people suffered such as aging populations and low birth rates around the world are not easy to answer from the history. However, he still keeps a positive attitude and believes that the new technology will help people to find a way to solve the problem.

The Deputy Dean of the College of Management at AU, Jenho-Peter Ou, mentioned that the Nobel Laureate Forum attracts not only students from the College of Management to participate, but also lots of students from diverse departments which include the College of Medical and Health Science, the College of Information and Electrical Engineering, the College of Creative Design, the College of Humanities and Social Sciences, and even students from high schools. The high participation of this event shows that the students of AU are full of enthusiasm about cross-domain learnings. Furthermore, it also represented that AU has committed to share education resources to the secondary educations and hope to cultivate young talents. After the forum, all the faculty members and students of AU who has attended this events expressed the common viewpoint that this is a rare opportunity to have a talk with the Nobel Prize winner!