A top university in Taiwan has fired a football coach accused of forcing students to give blood—hundreds of times—in exchange for academic credit. As wild as it sounds, this blood-for-grades scandal unfolded inside one of Taiwan’s most reputable universities.
For years, Chou Tai-ying, a decorated women’s football coach at National Taiwan Normal University (NTNU), allegedly pressured student-athletes to donate blood—sometimes multiple times a day—for mysterious “research projects.” In return, they were told they’d get the school credits they needed to graduate. No blood, no diploma.
One student told China Post Morning News she gave blood over 200 times and was poked so often that they couldn’t find veins in her arms anymore. “They even tried my wrist and failed,” she wrote. “I completely broke down. It took six tries before they finally succeeded.” Others said the pressure to comply spanned years, and that they stayed silent because they feared being expelled.
‘Vampire’ Coach Took Student Blood in Exchange for Graduation Credits
Chou was fired from her post on July 13, but the story didn’t end there. Over the weekend, the 61-year-old coach issued a formal apology. “It is definitely my fault for making you feel the way you did,” she said in a statement reported by BBC via Taiwan’s Focus News agency. “I had only a few players, and they were often injured.”
The school claims it didn’t know the extent of what was happening. But an internal investigation confirmed that blood draws began in 2019 and continued into this year, with unqualified students helping collect samples. Officials now say the blood was collected just once a day—not three times, as students and a Taiwanese politician had claimed—but admitted the samples were eventually thrown away because of how poorly the collection process was handled.
Professor Chen Hsueh-chih, who led one of the research projects, also apologized. “The aim was to help student athletes,” he said, while acknowledging the “harm” it caused students and their families. The university’s president has promised to overhaul its ethics protocols, and Taiwan’s Ministry of Education is now reviewing whether to revoke Chou’s coaching license entirely.
So far, the real purpose of the blood remains murky. The official story is that it was meant for athlete health studies, but nobody seems able to explain what those studies were, why untrained students were used as human syringes, or why this went on for five years without any real oversight.
Which is probably why people are still calling her the “vampire coach.”
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