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Ministry to help universities make top 100

With National Taiwan University (NTU) now on the list of the world’s top 100 universities in recent rankings by British newspaper the Times, the Ministry of Education’s next goal is to help other universities make the top 100 rankings in different academic fields, Minister of Education Wu Ching-chi (吳清基) said yesterday.

During a question-and-answer session with legislators on the Education and Culture Committee, the minister said a team of Taiwanese and international academics led by Academia Sinica President Wong Chi-huey (翁啟惠) would determine the criteria under which universities could apply for some of the NT$50 billion (US$1.54 billion) available in government funding.

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’s aim was to help universities improve their global standing and NTU has received the majority of the funds — about NT$3 billion — since 2005. Wu said on Thursday that the second stage of the project would begin in the 2011 academic year.

“The plan is to have universities choose a top academic field [when the schools apply for the grant]. For example, National Yang Ming University plays a leading role in studies of the cognitive learning [processes] of the brain, while NTU and Yang Ming excel in biomedical technology research and National Chiao Tung University is good at research into photonics,” Wu said. “I believe these schools can strive to make it into the world’s top 100 universities in these fields.”

In response to lawmakers’ concerns that top universities would focus on publishing as many academic papers as possible, while ignoring the importance of teaching, Wu said the ministry would remind the schools that the ultimate goal of education is to help students become independent learners and to care about other people.

Wu said Taiwan still has an edge over other nations in East Asia, because of democracy, freedom, the quality of teachers and the quality of the nation’s vocational education.

“There is a lot of room for improvement, however, in terms of the competitiveness of our higher education within East Asia,” Wu said.

The minister said universities needed to attract international students because of their achievements rather than using scholarships.
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