2021-06-11
Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) announced the latest 2022 QS World University Ranking on June 8. This year, the total number of the universities included in the ranking has increased, and so the overall rankings of most of the top universities in Taiwan have dropped, however, the performance of National Sun Yat-sen University went against the trend as it improved its overall ranking from 416 to 412, four ranks up from last year.
Director of the Office of Institutional Research, Professor Shiao-Wei Kuo pointed out that NSYSU, besides rising in the ranking by 4 ranks, improved its performance in 4 out of 6 ranking indicators: Academic Reputation, Employer Reputation, Faculty Student Ratio, and International Students Ratio. Although NSYSU’s final score for International Faculty Ratio and Citations per Faculty has not been as good as last year, it has seen a great improvement in comparison with original data: the International Faculty Ratio has increased from 8.8% to 12.2%, the 3rd place among universities in Taiwan (the 8th in last year’s ranking). The Citations per Faculty have increased from 53.44 to 64.85, the 4th best result among Taiwanese universities, higher than the original 6th.
NSYSU President Ying-Yao Cheng said that the University has the Intelligent Electronic Commerce Research Center, the Center of Crystal Research, the Aerosol Science Research Center, and is actively developing new key fields, such as 5G communications, aquaculture applying AI technology, information security, biomimicry technology, maritime engineering, marine environment conservation, and has been accumulating academic research capacity, collaborating with the industry, and helping upgrade the industry in Taiwan.
President Cheng gave an example: in recent years, NSYSU has been committed to integrating the capacity of two disciplines – electrical engineering and marine sciences to establish a domestic unit for industry-academia collaboration and research in marine technology – Manned Submersible Development Alliance, to develop deep-ocean equipment, unique in Taiwan, to conduct hydrospace detection at depth of up to 3000 m. NSYSU’s experience and capacity in handling the design of a unique system have elevated Taiwan to a world-class hub of marine science research.
This year, NSYSU received grants in the field of literature and management of the Benchmark Program in Humanities and Social Sciences for Higher Education Institutions. President Cheng emphasized that it was not easy to achieve the program’s threshold for application because of high requirements in international and academic performance, such as: entering the top 500 ranks in the QS World University Rankings by Subject for the disciplines between 2018 and 2020 and achieving a good quality of publications in domestic and international journals. The acceptance of NSYSU’s application is proof of the University’s high academic capacity standards.
In addition to improving its position in the overall ranking – QS World University Ranking, National Sun Yat-sen University was also ranked as Asia’s 172nd best in Asia University Rankings by Times Higher Education (THE), released on June 2. What is more, NSYSU has been ranked for the first time in THE Impact Rankings that assess universities against the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), achieving the top 401-600 rank band worldwide.