National Taiwan University (NTU) fell two notches to 82nd in the 2013/2014 world university rankings released yesterday by a British education network.
NTU remained the only school in Taiwan to be listed among the top 100 in the annual QS World University Rankings compiled by the QS education network.
Ben Sowter, head of the QS Intelligence unit, said that 100 universities were added to this year’s evaluation to bring the total to 836 from 76 countries, intensifying the competition for a spot in the top 100.
In an increasingly competitive global environment, “maintaining or keeping close to a previous position is an achievement in itself,” Sowter said.
The loss of two places “does not represent a trend of decline for NTU,” Sowter said, adding that there is every chance it could move up two or three places next year.
Other Taiwanese universities that made it to the top 400 were National Tsing Hua University (199th, 192nd last year), National Chiao Tung University (230th, 238th last year), National Cheng Kung University (247th, 271st last year), National Yang Ming University (295th, 285th last year) and Taipei Medical University (363rd, 323rd last year).
National Central University placed somewhere between 401st and 410th, Taiwan University of Science and Technology finished in 411th to 420th, National Sun Yat-sen University placed from 461st to 470th, and National Taiwan Normal University came in at 481st to 490th.
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology retained its top spot in the ranking, followed by Harvard University and the University of Cambridge.
Rounding out the top 10 were University College London, Imperial College London, University of Oxford, Stanford University, Yale University, University of Chicago, Princeton University and the California Institute of Technology.
Seven Chinese universities were in the top 200 — Peking University (46th), Tsinghua University (48th), Fudan University (88th), Shanghai Jiao Tong University (123rd), Zhejiang University (165th), University of Science and Technology of China (174th) and Nanjing University (175th).
The QS education network first began to evaluate universities in 2004.
Six indicators were used to determine the rankings: academic reputation, employer reputation, faculty-to-student ratio, citations per faculty, proportion of international students and proportion of international faculty.
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