Taipei, June 29 (CNA) National Taiwan University (NTU) has been listed 19th in Asia and 69th in the world in the latest Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) World University Rankings released 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 website 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.
Three new indicators -- international research network, employment outcomes, and sustainability -- were also considered, QS said, "to reflect the changing priorities of students and the evolving missions of world-class higher education institutions today."
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 10 best domestic universities rounding out 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 list with 26.2 overall points, followed by National Sun Yat-sen University (505th, 23), National Chengchi University (567th, 20.8) and Taipei Medical University (577th, 20.5).
Among the universities above, NTNU was the only one with more than 30 in international students ratio (31.1), and NTU stood alone as the one with more than 30 in international research network (33.2), while none of them scored over 30 in international faculty ratio, the QS website indicated.
Commenting on the typical weaknesses of Taiwanese universities, NTU stated that it was partly impacted by the pandemic, which precluded many opportunities for international exchanges, and that it has had a few 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 certain fields like Sinology and the contributions made by people from the universities to countries and societies, it said.
NTU said that the university's top priority is cultivating talents for countries and societies, rather than simply chasing a high ranking.
The top 10 universities of the QS ranking were Massachusetts Institute of Technology, University of Cambridge, University of Oxford, Harvard University, Stanford University, Imperial College London, ETH Zurich, National University of Singapore (NUS), UCL, and 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.
The QS rankings were first issued in 2004 in conjunction with Times Higher Education (THE), before QS and THE parted ways in 2009 to produce separate university rankings.
