National Taiwan University Proceeded to the 51^st to 60^th Place in Times Higher Education World University 2013 Rankings

The Times, the UK news, reported that Times Higher Education has already announced the 2013 world university rankings in the evening on March 4^th, according to the London time. National Taiwan University proceeded to the 51^st to 60^th place, the best ranking ever over the NTU history. According to the data analysis, the reason why National Taiwan University could make such a huge leap is simply because we have been focusing on the international progress over the past year.

Phil Baty, the chief editor of THE (Times Higher Education), stated that there are only 100 universities can be ranked in this world university reputation, and they are 0.5% of all the high educational institutes. All are world top universities, when it comes to teaching, research, knowledge transfer and international outlook.

Back in 2011, National Taiwan University was ranked as the 81^st to 90^th place and then progressed to 61^st to 70^th in 2012. With the good work keeping on, we have been just ranked as the 51^st to 60^th place in the new school year of 2013. Ipsos MediaCT conducted the questionnaire of the world top university ranking this time, and 16,639 scholars from 150 countries around the world filled the questionnaire to provide the most comprehensive and balanced information available for the 2013 world university rankings. All scholars involved in this ranking have all served in high educational institutes more than 16 years. The world top university rankings employ 13 carefully calibrated performance indicators to provide the comparisons, which are trusted by students, academics, university leaders, industries and governments.

National Taiwan University has been working on the Aim for the Top University Project with the assignment from the Ministry of Education ever since 2006. Within the conducting goal of “balanced development to break through the key points”, we seek for the best to promote at least 10 to 15 research areas to the world top prominence. The second Aim for the Top University Project was held in 2011 to keep up the good work from the previous one so that National Taiwan University can promote the teaching quality in every way and participate in the cross-country research projects. We anticipate the 50^th place in the Times Higher Education world university rankings. In addition to that, National Taiwan University has already established three cross-country world top research centers under the financial support from the National Science Council: the Intel-NTU research center with the corporation from Intel, the Cross-Country Top Cancer Research Center with the corporation from MD Anderson Cancer Center in the United States, the iCeiRA (NTU-International Center of Excellence on Intelligent Robotics and Automation Research with the corporation from CNRS (French National Center for Scientific Research) and UPMC (University Pierre and Marie Curie in Paris). What have been accomplished above help National Taiwan University a lot by elevating the international academic outlook with the actual research performances.

In the 2013 Times Higher Education World University Rankings powered by Thompson Reuters, National Taiwan University has proceeded to the 51^st-60^th place, which is the best place ever in the NTU history. This shows that conducting the Aim for the Top University Project has proved to be really effective. Hereby, National Taiwan University would like to thank the full support from the National Science Council by providing the financial support. We also believe that National Taiwan University can be anticipated to be one of the top 50 universities in the world as long as the Ministry of Education continues the plan for the Aim for the Top University Project.