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Newspaper ranks NTU in world’s top universities

National Taiwan University (NTU) vowed yesterday to continue with its efforts to become one of the world’s top universities after the latest World University Ranking by British newspaper the Times put the school in 95th place.

NTU was the first Taiwanese university to make the top 100 world universities in the annual rankings, released by the Times Higher Education magazine yesterday.

NTU came in 124th last year and 102nd in 2007.

NTU secretary-general Sebastian Liao (廖咸浩) told reporters that the university had made major progress in its performance in arts and humanities over the past year but added that the school still needed to work on its global reputation.

He said Ministry of Education grants to top universities over the past few years had helped the school make the breakthrough in the ranking.

The ministry began a special project in 2005 to provide yearly funding of NT$10 billion (US$311.1 million) for five consecutive years to the nation’s top universities.

The project was aimed at helping local universities improve their global standing with NTU receiving the majority of the funds — about NT$3 billion — since 2005.

Minister of Education Wu Ching-chi (吳清基) said the breakthrough meant the ministry’s efforts had paid off.

During a question-and-answer session with legislators at the Education and Culture Committee, Wu said the ministry planned to launch the second stage of the project in the 2011 academic year, providing NT$10 billion each year to help universities achieve excellence.

While the NTU administration celebrated, NTU Student Association president Fu Wei-cher (傅偉哲) questioned the university’s core values.

Fu told a press conference that the school had spent a lot of money recruiting academics in a bid to publish as many research papers as possible.

“[The school] is like a sweat shop in a developing country,” Fu said.

Other universities in the list of the top 500 worldwide included National Tsing Hua University, ranked 281st, National Cheng Kung University, which ranked 354th, and National Chiao Tung University, which came in 411th.
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