A college-ranking report released by the Ministry of Education last week has enraged college presidents, professors and student bodies around the country.
Since the report measured only the sum of published research papers in three international databases, college presidents and professors argued that the ministry's ranking report did not capture academic excellence.
On the contrary, it will only distract Taiwan's higher education to endlessly compete in publishing research papers, sacrificing teaching quality and students' learning rights, they said.
"The ministry emphasized there will be two types of colleges in the future: universities focusing on research and universities focusing on teaching. Yet the ranking has implied or even misled the educational direction," said Lu Chien-chi (呂健吉), philosophy professor at Huafan University.
"I am afraid that professors will pay more attention to studying rather than teaching," he said.
And many researchers decried the ranking methodology that the ministry used as "coarse," "flimsy" or "incomprehensive."
The indicators that the ministry applied to evaluate colleges' academic excellence relied on the aggregate numbers of research papers, dissertations and journal articles published in the Science Citation Index (SCI), the Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI) and the Engineering Index (EI) last year.
The SCI, SSCI and EI are important indicators to assess universities and colleges' academic research capabilities in the fields of science, social science and engineering.
Nevertheless, according to these evaluation indicators, schools that have more science and engineering departments will consequently be ranked at the top and schools that focus on liberal arts and humanities will inevitably be at the bottom of the rankings.
Yu Te-hui (
"The ranking that belittled the humanities yet valued the sciences simply revealed the ministry officials' ignorance," Yu said. "Actually the papers in humanities have limited publication in international journals because some cultural studies have only regional value," he said.
National Chengchi University, a traditionally top-ranking school that is reputed for its business, law and journalism schools, drastically slipped to 48th place among 154 colleges and universities, according to the ministry's evaluation.
Seeing its ranking slumping lower than many private colleges, Chengchi's officials and students were outraged and asked the ministry to reevaluate its ranking. Chengchi's officials convened news conferences three times in the past week, asking the ministry to clear the university's reputation and even threatened to sue the ministry. Chengchi's students rallied in front of the ministry buildings on Friday to protest the ranking.
"We felt sorry about the ministry's reckless announcement of the incomplete evaluation," said Chengchi University President Cheng Jei-cheng (
"The ministry should be more discreet when releasing such a report, avoiding doing harm to colleges who actually run schools earnestly," he said.
"The college experience consists of a host of intangibles that cannot be reduced to mere numbers," said Lee Ting-tsan (李丁讚), head of the Graduate School of Sociology at National Tsing-hua University, indicating that quantitative measures only obscured objective facts.
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