Teacher quality has been a perennial issue in the field of education. In addition to academic ability, psychological and motivational characteristics are regarded as increasingly important dimensions of teacher quality. This study has established a multidimensional framework of teacher quality including social competency, adaptive ability and career commitment and used it to examine the qualities of pre-service college students in teacher education programs based on a national survey in Taiwan. It is found that in this country where "those who are academically able, teach" has been a tradition, pre-service students further possess better adaptive and motivational qualities than their non-teaching counterparts. The underlying policy and socio-cultural contexts of such a positive phenomenon of "those who are adaptive and motivated, teach" are further explained and implications for teacher educators and policy makers are discussed. (Contains 3 tables and 1 figure.)