Hualien-based Tzu Chi University led 12 Taiwanese universities that made the Times Higher Education’s first-ever global university impact ranking, which were published on Thursday.
The University of Auckland topped the measure of institutes’ social and economic impact, with a score of 97.2 in the survey, which covered 462 universities from 76 countries, the Times Higher Education Web site said.
McMaster University in Canada was second, followed by the University of British Columbia in Canada and the University of Manchester in the UK, which were tied for third.
Photo: Hua Meng-ching, Taipei Times
Tzu Chi University was the highest-ranked Taiwanese university at 67th — 10th in Asia — with an overall score of 80.1, while National Taiwan University (NTU) ranked 70th overall and 11th in Asia with a score of 79.7.
National Cheng Kung University (NCKU) was 80th overall and 14th in Asia with a score of 78.
Asia University, National Changhua University of Education and National Yunlin University of Science and Technology were in the group ranked 101st to 200th.
Chaoyang University of Technology, China Medical University, National Central University, National University of Kaohsiung, National Tsing Hua University and National Taipei University were ranked in the 201-300 group.
“This new ranking will hold universities directly to account for their own policies on equality (including gender pay) and decent work (including casualization),” Times Higher Education chief knowledge officer Phil Baty said.
Times Higher Education said the rankings were based on how well universities do on 11 of the UN’s 17 sustainable development goals (SDGs). Among the metrics looked at were university policies on academic freedom, their use of secure employment contracts and their share of female academic staff.
Each university was scored based on its performance on SDG No. 17 — building partnerships to achieve the SDGs — and on the three other SDGs in which it scored the highest.
NTU had the highest score of any institution for its performance on SDG No. 16, covering peace, justice and strong institutions, while NCKU was 16th for SDG No. 9, covering industry, innovation and infrastructure. Tzu Chi was 26th for SDG No. 3, covering good health and well-being.
Overall, the University of Hong Kong was the highest-ranked Asian university in 10th, followed by South Korean institutes Kyung Hee University (27th) and Sungkyunkwan University (30th).
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