9 local universities ranked in top 500

In addition to NTU, which moved one notch up from last year, the other eight local universities are National Tsing Hua University (NTHU, 196th from last year's 223rd), National Cheng Kung University (283rd from 281st), National Yang Ming University (290th from 306th), National Chiao Tung University (327th from 389th), National Taiwan University of Science and Technology (370th from 351st) and three others that made the list for the first time — National Central University (398th), National Sun Yat-Sen University (ranking not specified) and National Taiwan Normal University (not specified).

The ranking is primarily based on the following criteria: academic peer review, employer review, ratio of faculty to students, citations per faculty and ratio of international to local faculty, as well as ratio of international to local students.

Ben Sowter, head of the QS Intelligence Unit, attributed the rise in rankings to the universities' academic reputations, citations per faculty and the numbers of international faculty in the ranked universities.

Sowter also said that Taiwanese universities' efforts to get more research papers published in international journals, increasing teaching resources and promoting international engagements for faculty are also factors that helped improve their ratings.

Cambridge University in the United Kingdom overtook Harvard University in the United States to take the top spot in the rankings.

As for a Taiwan government plan to allow Chinese students to study at Taiwanese universities, Sowter said that given that the world is a global village, letting more people engage in international exchanges is the correct thing to do.

After learning about the rankings, Minister of Education Wu Ching-ji said Wednesday that the inclusion of NTU and NTHU among the top 200 universities shows that the country's first five year NT$50 billion (US$1.56 billion) program aimed at upgrading the nation's universities into top academic research centers has borne fruit.

Noting that the essential aim of tertiary education is to cultivate talent and boost a country's national competitiveness, Wu said the government will continue pushing a second five-year NT$50-billion program that will allocate more resources to local universities.

Meanwhile, Chiang Been-huang, dean of NTU's Academic Affairs, said the university aims to make the list of the world best 50 universities and will work to catch up with the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign (UIUC), which ranked 60th in this year's rankings, because UIUC's scale is similar to that of NTU.

Chiang also said that NTU will do more to strengthen its teaching, research and international engagements by setting up 10 research centers and carrying out academic exchanges and cooperation with foreign universities.

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