National Taiwan University (NTU) ranks among the top 150 universities in the world, according to the latest Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU) published by Shanghai Jiao Tong University on Sunday.
NTU surpassed the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) and Tsinghua University in Beijing, placing in the 101-150 range.
Other Taiwanese universities that made it onto the ARWU list included National Cheng Kung University, which placed in the 201-300 range. National Tsing Hua University and National Chiao Tung University — both in Hsinchu City — made it into the 301-400 range.
Seventeen US universities took the top 20 positions, with Harvard University remaining No. 1 for the ninth consecutive year.
The top two Asian universities were University of Tokyo and Kyoto University — both in Japan — ranked 21st and 27th in the world respectively.
The annual list compiled by ARWU first appeared in 2003. It ranks the 500 best schools in the world based on the number of Nobel laureates, Fields medalists, cited researchers, papers indexed by the Science Citation Index Expanded and Social Science Index and papers published in Nature and Science.
However, the ranking has drawn criticism for its heavy emphasis on natural sciences over social sciences and humanities, especially from Europe. Officials there say the rankings are biased against European universities.
After Harvard, the other top 10 universities are Stanford University; Massachusetts Institute of Technology; University of California, Berkeley; University of Cambridge; California Institute of Technology; Princeton University; Columbia University, the University of Chicago and University of Oxford.
The top 100 universities are listed, while the remaining 400 are presented only with their range of placement on ARWU’s Web site.
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