Sixteen Taiwanese universities have made it into the top 200 of QS 2014 World University Rankings by Subject released on Wednesday by UK-based higher education information provider Quacquarelli Symonds (QS).
National Taiwan University (NTU) was the best performer in the nation with 26 subject categories, the most for any of the Taiwanese universities listed.
Twenty-two of the school’s subjects were included in the top 100 world rankings, with 10 listed in the top 50 and its electrical engineering program credited as the highest-ranked subject in Taiwan at 20th place.
A National Taiwan University spokesman said that the school’s overall performance this year is the best in its history. Finance made it into the top 50 rankings for the first time, highlighting the importance the university attaches to the social sciences and humanities, he said.
National Tsing Hua University and National Taiwan Normal University each had at least one subject listed among the top 50 schools. Tsing Hua’s chemical engineering was ranked 39th, while Taiwan Normal’s education was placed 42nd.
National Chiao Tung University had 10 subjects listed among the top 200 universities in the world, with electrical engineering, mechanical engineering, material science and statistics making the top 100 list.
Taipei Medical University’s medicine program placed 91st on that list.
QS Intelligence Unit head Ben Sowter said that National Taiwan University has moved up to be ranked among top universities in the world, with strong showings in some subjects.
The emergence of universities in Asia has posed strong competition to US and UK academic institutions in the areas of mathematics, engineering and science, Sowter said.
Asian universities account for 10 of the top 30 rankings in the subjects of chemical, civil and electronic engineering, showing that schools in the region are gaining a stronger influence in the world, he said.
Now in its third year, the annual QS World University Rankings by Subject identifies the world’s strongest universities in 30 different subject areas and is an extension of the overall QS World University Rankings. QS evaluated 3,002 universities this year.
The company used six indicators to determine the rankings: academic reputation, employer reputation, citations per faculty from SciVerse Scopus, faculty-student ratio, proportion of international students and proportion of international faculty.
The QS Web site says the by-subject rankings are designed to “provide comparative information at discipline level and to highlight the excellence of institutions in specialist areas.”
The military has spotted two Chinese warships operating in waters near Penghu County in the Taiwan Strait and sent its own naval and air forces to monitor the vessels, the Ministry of National Defense (MND) said. Beijing sends warships and warplanes into the waters and skies around Taiwan on an almost daily basis, drawing condemnation from Taipei. While the ministry offers daily updates on the locations of Chinese military aircraft, it only rarely gives details of where Chinese warships are operating, generally only when it detects aircraft carriers, as happened last week. A Chinese destroyer and a frigate entered waters to the southwest
A magnitude 6.1 earthquake struck off the coast of Yilan County at 8:39pm tonight, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said, with no immediate reports of damage or injuries. The epicenter was 38.7km east-northeast of Yilan County Hall at a focal depth of 98.3km, the CWA’s Seismological Center said. The quake’s maximum intensity, which gauges the actual physical effect of a seismic event, was a level 4 on Taiwan’s 7-tier intensity scale, the center said. That intensity level was recorded in Yilan County’s Nanao Township (南澳), Hsinchu County’s Guansi Township (關西), Nantou County’s Hehuanshan (合歡山) and Hualien County’s Yanliao (鹽寮). An intensity of 3 was
Instead of focusing solely on the threat of a full-scale military invasion, the US and its allies must prepare for a potential Chinese “quarantine” of Taiwan enforced through customs inspections, Stanford University Hoover fellow Eyck Freymann said in a Foreign Affairs article published on Wednesday. China could use various “gray zone” tactics in “reconfiguring the regional and ultimately the global economic order without a war,” said Freymann, who is also a nonresident research fellow at the US Naval War College. China might seize control of Taiwan’s links to the outside world by requiring all flights and ships entering or leaving Taiwan
The next minimum wage hike is expected to exceed NT$30,000, President William Lai (賴清德) said yesterday during an award ceremony honoring “model workers,” including migrant workers, at the Presidential Office ahead of Workers’ Day today. Lai said he wished to thank the awardees on behalf of the nation and extend his most sincere respect for their hard work, on which Taiwan’s prosperity has been built. Lai specifically thanked 10 migrant workers selected for the award, saying that although they left their home countries to further their own goals, their efforts have benefited Taiwan as well. The nation’s industrial sector and small businesses lay
RSS