National Taiwan University (NTU) and Tamkang University are the nation's best public and private universities, according the result of the largest-ever review of university administration, which was published on Wednesday.
The Ministry of Education (MOE) said the results would be used as a standard for future tuition policies and enrollment procedures.
With a review center for higher education to be set up at the end of this year, the ministry vowed to improve its university review system.
Starting next year, schools with bad reviews may be weeded out.
The review of university administrative affairs, conducted by the ministry and the Taiwan Review Association, took a full year and investigated the performance of a total of 76 colleges and universities.
The 12 review criteria included educational resources, the level of internationalism and professionalism in academic fields, as well as administrative affairs.
The actual grades and rankings of each university were not published, so that schools can focus on improving their own problems, instead of competing with other universities on rankings, the review committee said.
"University reviews are an important measure to improve the quality of higher education. Besides the administrative affairs review, the ministry will begin a review next year to examine the quality of education in all departments, including curriculum design and teaching resources at each university," said Chen De-hua (
Chen said that the education review will be conducted once every five years.
Universities that fail to pass the review will be asked to close down.
According to the review, both NTU and Tamkang University were graded "very good" in 10 of the 12 criteria.
National Chiao Tung University and National Ching Hua University received the second and third best scores among public universities.
Among private universities, Tung Hai University and Fu Jen Catholic University were named the top private universities after Tamkang University.
Deng Chi-fu (
"New universities have fewer foreign students enrolled and suffer from fewer opportunities for teachers to do educational exchanges overseas," he said.
According to the MOE, the university review system was started in 1975.
The ministry began by reviewing education and administrative affairs in mathematics, physics and chemical engineering departments, as well as medical schools.
This was later expanded to more departments.
This year's review, the largest ever, was designed to establish a more thorough and complete examination of universities.
Currently there are 167 colleges and universities throughout Taiwan.
Chen said he hoped that an improved university review system would mean that in the future, poorly performing schools will be forced to shut down, improving the quality of higher education.
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