HEEACT Releases a New Outstanding & Objective World University Ranking

TAIPEI, Oct. 6 /PRNewswire-Asia/ -- A professional evaluation organization, "HEEACT", releases its 2010 "Performance Ranking of Scientific Papers for World Universities", and for the first time, HEEACT further offers the extended subject based rankings in the science and technology fields, which is by far unique in the world.

International ranking scholars and experts now gather in the IREG-5 Conference in Berlin to discuss the issues facing university rankings. Meanwhile in Asia, Taiwan has a ranking system "HEEACT Ranking" to launch 2010 ranking, which takes account a university's short-term research performance and serves as a valuable source tool for universities to demonstrate their research competitiveness. It outperforms the other world university rankings in objectivity and reliability of the evidence.

Starting from 2007, HEEACT Ranking, also known as the Performance Ranking of Scientific Papers for World Universities, is the first global university ranking developed by Taiwanese professional evaluation organization, Higher Education Evaluation & Accreditation Council of Taiwan (HEEACT), subsidized by government funding. It includes the top 500 world universities based on their overall performance as well as separate rankings by field from 2008 and by subject from 2010. In particular, HEEACT Ranking is also the unique ranking based on the science and technology subjects in the world.

An Objective and Stable World University Ranking

To compare the renowned world university rankings, the HEEACT Ranking is characteristic in its emphasis on the quality of scientific papers. Both the THE (by Times Higher Education) and QS Rankings (by Quacquarelli Symonds) emphasize on school reputation; peer review accounts for a large proportion of their scores. The ARWU (by Shanghai Jiao Tong University) focuses on extraordinary academic achievements such as the numbers of Nobel Prize and Fields Medal winners. In contrast, the HEEACT Ranking is based entirely on scientific papers statistics and focuses on three major criteria -- research productivity, research impact, and research excellence. Employing statistical data derived from authoritative sources, the HEEACT Ranking is more objective, stable, and useful for benchmarking.

Emphasis on Short-term Indicators

A distinct feature of the HEEACT Ranking is to emphasize on a university's short-term research performance. It evaluates both short-term (55%) and long-term (45%) research performance of a university. Highlighting short-term performance allows for the identification of and encourages universities currently investing intensive efforts on scientific research. The feature of emphasis on short-term indicators helps to reflect the most current status of school performance and ensures a sensitive and fair comparison of world universities -- some with longer and some with shorter institutional histories, and across the developed, newly developed, and developing countries. A further characteristic of the HEEACT Ranking exceeding the other ranking systems is that the indicators accessing research quality account for 80% of the performance score.

The 2010 HEEACT Ranking Summary

This year, the top 10 universities in the overall HEEACT Ranking are: Harvard University, Stanford University, Johns Hopkins University, University of Washington-Seattle, University of California-Los Angeles, University of California-Berkeley, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, University of Michigan-Ann Arbor, University of Toronto, and University of Oxford. Harvard of the United States remained in the top spot. In Europe and Asia, the University of Oxford in UK and the University of Tokyo in Japan had the best performance, finishing the 10th and 14th respectively in the ranking.

In field based rankings, Harvard is in the lead in the fields of clinical medicine, life sciences, and social sciences. MIT is the top in engineering and computing & technology. UC-Berkeley and UC-Davis finished respectively in the first place in natural sciences and agriculture & environment sciences.

In the science and technology subject rankings, MIT leads in electrical engineering, computer science, mechanical engineering, and materials science. UC-Berkeley leads in physics, chemistry, and civil engineering. Stanford, University of Colorado-Boulder, and Kyoto University of Japan are respectively crowned in mathematics, geosciences, and chemical engineering.

The complete listings of the 2010 HEEACT Ranking are now available on the following website: http://ranking.heeact.edu.tw .

    For more information, please contact:

     Dr. Mu-Hsuan Huang
     Email: [email protected]

SOURCE Higher Education Evaluation & Accreditation Council of Taiwan