Taiwan's Dismal Showing in World University Rankings

[afterspivak]

It’s time to revive this thread, which is btw a very interesting read!

Regarding the Times Higher Education ranking results: what kind of methodology would rank Asia University (I think this private university is in Taichung) ahead of—or even equivalent to—National Tsing Hua University and National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University? This does not pass the sniff test.

National Taiwan University ranked 140th in world rankings - Focus Taiwan

Of Taiwan’s universities, China Medical University came next [after NTU], ranking between 301-305, followed by Asia University, National Taiwan University of Science and Technology, National Tsing Hua University, National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University (NYCU) and Taipei Medical University, ranking between 401-500.

This looks completely silly to me.

Guy

[TT]

@Omniloquacious

Is anyone surprised by this? Do those of you teaching or studying in Taiwan’s higher education sector see any hope that this decline might be reversed?

No, they can and do dump money into the system but that will only take it so far

It’s also worth noting that the ranking systems aren’t amazing. What they measure a lot is the money poured in…

[TT]

@yuli

meaning, because their way of thinking has basically been the same as that in Japan. So i feel free to call it a Chinese sickness.

Face is a cultural aspect I thinking holding the universities back, that is common to both Japan and China. Is fraud an issue in Japan?

@fenlander

Chairman Mao had a lot going for him when he said Chinese culture is holding back progress. This fear of losing face and the difficulty in admitting that things may need to be changed is a real bind on their development.

Yup

[TT]

@archylgp

The “professor” started each class with “what are we going to do today” and then she would chat with the students about random topics. It was a Chinese dialectology class, by the way, which is a highly theoretical field, but we didn’t get past "in Taiwanese we say [enter some word] and in Mandarin we say [enter the Mandarin equivalent]. My other classes at NCCU haven’t been much better; last week a professor had us take turns reading articles out load to each other. The class is about the oracle bone characters (甲骨文), so really no matter what we do it’s still interesting, though.

Earlier a poster mentioned not being able to disagree with professors. This can be a serious problem; I

Again, fraud and face.

[TT]

@Mawvellous

In the social sciences, around 90% of the professors are Western trained (the majority in the United States, but also some from European countries

And when those students aren’t really prepared but paying double or triple, how much time do the professors in the west take, who are also chasing publications and rankings?

Easier to just shuffle them through and send them back to their home country

[TT]

@urodacus

Taiwan has terrible trouble attracting and keeping worthwhile talent as their salaries are abysmal, they have a poor policy of insisting on a diverse range of post doctoral positions in overseas universities before making the grade to get on faculty, they don’t teach in English anywhere near enough, they don’t attract enough US and European research money onto their campuses, and they have a bloated system of easy university entry and a shocking record of not failing enough people. And the degrees of the good students get undervalued by the millions of piss-poor grads who can barely tie their shoelaces, let alone for constructive criticism or put two unique thoughts together in a sentence

This holds up well

[TT]

@headhonchoII

You can game the rankings by throwing piles of money at it, hiring researchers with large numbers of citations, one or two Nobel Laureates etc. It’s mainly related to how much money you can invest in a given university. What does ranking mean anyway, I mean if I study Russian at MIT what does that mean? There’s no point patting yourself on the back for a ranking that’s nothing much to do with you personally.

Yup

[TT]

@archylgp

I think it’s important to think about what these rankings represent. Are they reflective of a better education for their students? Or research money and the number of published articles? The latter would be much easier to quantify

Money

[TT]

@afterspivak

It’s time to revive this thread, which is btw a very interesting read

Funny how little has changed

@afterspivak

Regarding the Times Higher Education ranking results: what kind of methodology would rank Asia University (I think this private university is in Taichung) ahead of—or even equivalent to—National Tsing Hua University and National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University?

The ranking systems are generally the unreliable, especially for individual experience.

[TT]

How are the World University Rankings calculated?

Metrics included

Teaching (the learning environment): 29.5%

• Teaching reputation: 15%
• Staff-to-student ratio: 4.5%
• Doctorate-to-bachelor’s ratio: 2%
• Doctorates-awarded-to-academic-staff ratio: 5.5%
• Institutional income: 2.5%

From THE, the teaching indicators literally include money. For my money the only one of these with face validity is the first one.

World University Rankings 2026: methodology

Edit: I downloaded the “full” methodology which is sparse on details. Even the first has little value, IMO, and the fourth I don’t even understand

[afterspivak]

@TT

This holds up well

@urodacus is awesome. I agree that’s a great post.

Guy

[afterspivak]

Ah yes the utterly scientific “29.5%” attributed to teaching.

These guys are just yanking things out of their derrieres.

Guy

[ReBorn]

It’s bizness

[TT]

QS is down the block. They sell stars

[PeiHua-Connie]

@TT

QS is down the block. They sell stars

Well they need money, pay people to make reviews