Last Sept. 16, the Times Higher Education (THE), known as the leader in world university ranking, released the 2010 World University Ranking, in which NTHU has achieved a new height; 107^th in the world and the top on the list of other universities in Taiwan. This is another exciting success for the whole university after we inched our way into the Top 200 in the 2010 University Ranking released by QS last Sept. 8, ranking 196^th.

President Lih-J. Chen said that he is pleased but not surprised by the news. "The feature of this ranking is to assess the scale of the university based on various factors and without the peer comparison. The number of professors and students in National Taiwan University is triple that of ours, and their volume of research should surely be higher than ours. However, when it comes to the average performance of the professors, Tsing Hua always excels. The result of this ranking is an encouragement and affirmation for NTHU's excellent faculty and researchers."

The Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU) of THE can be seen as one of the most important ranking worldwide. From 2004 to 2009, the THE ranking was compiled by Quacquarelli Symonds Limited (QS). After they ended their partnership in 2009, the data began to be provided by Thomson Reuters this year (2010). A new computing method is adopted for the assessment indicators, which takes into consideration aspects such as research, teaching and knowledge imparting, instead of the school's fame and history. The criteria and their percentages are listed as follows. Teaching – the learning environment, 30％; Citations – research influence, 32.5％; Research – volume, income and reputation, 30％; International mix – staff and students, 5％; and Industry income – innovation, 2.5％.

In the 2010 ranking of THE, 4 universities in Taiwan are listed in the Top 200, namely, National Tsing Hua University(107), National Taiwan University(115), National Sun Yat-sen University(163) and National Chiao Tung University(181). We have extreme confidence in the research and teaching performance of our professors, and we are doubling our effort to reach the goal of becoming one of the world's top 100.