National Taiwan University (NTU) was 19th in Asia and 69th in the world in the Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) World University Rankings released on Tuesday.
Taiwan’s top university rose from 77th in last year’s rankings and was the only Taiwanese university in the world’s top 100, with an overall score of 67.9.
According to the official Web site of QS, the ranking was graded based on academic reputation, employment reputation, faculty-student ratio, citations per faculty, international faculty ratio and international student ratio, among other factors.
Photo: Lin Cheng-kung, Taipei Times
Three new indicators — international research network, employment outcomes and sustainability — were also considered, “to reflect the changing priorities of students and the evolving missions of world-class higher education institutions today,” QS said.
NTU scored 92.8 in academic reputation, 91.3 in employer reputation, 99.7 in employment outcomes and 95.6 in sustainability. Its employment outcomes were 12th in the world and fourth in Asia.
The domestic universities after NTU were National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University (217th, 43.3), National Cheng Kung University (228th, 41.8), National Tsing Hua University (233rd, 41.3) and National Taiwan University of Science and Technology (387th, 28.3).
National Taipei University of Technology and National Taiwan Normal University (NTNU) tied for 431st of the 1,500 higher educational institutions on the list with 26.2 points, followed by National Sun Yat-sen University (505th, 23), National Chengchi University (567th, 20.8) and Taipei Medical University (577th, 20.5).
Among them, NTNU was the only one with a score of more than 30 in international student ratio (31.1), and NTU was the only one with a score of more than 30 in international research network (33.2), while none of them scored over 30 in international faculty ratio, the QS Web site said.
NTU said that its score was partly affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, which precluded many international exchange opportunities, and that it has strategies to bolster such activities.
However, many advantages of Taiwanese universities were hard to quantify, NTU’s Office of Research and Development said.
In addition to the quality and characteristics of faculty and students, the rankings excluded studies of some fields, such as Sinology, and the contributions made by people from the universities to countries and societies, it said.
NTU said that its top priority is cultivating talent for countries and societies, rather than simply chasing a high ranking.
The top 10 universities in the QS ranking were the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), the University of Cambridge, the University of Oxford, Harvard University, Stanford University, Imperial College London, ETH Zurich, the National University of Singapore (NUS) and the University of California, Berkeley.
NUS was the only Asian university making it to the top 10, and MIT, scoring 100 overall, has remained atop the list since 2012.
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