University Rankings

The big news last week in Taiwan, was that Taiwan National University(NTU) was ranked one of the top 100 Universities in the world. For Taiwan which is not a recognized country in the UN and claimed as a renegade province by mainland China, these world recognitions are a big deal. Forget that Taiwan has 25 million people, organized as a democratic country, the 42nd world economy, .... because mainland China has the veto vote in the UN Taiwan is still not considered a country. Taiwan has more people that any US state except California. (While some small almost deserted islands are.)

The Taiwanese government invested a lot of money in the premier University(NTU) in Taiwan in Taipei, to raise Taiwan's image. The effort paid off and now NTU is in the top 100. The rankings are based on:

Academic Peer Review	Composite score drawn from peer review survey	40%
Employer Review	Score based on responses to employer survey.	10%
Faculty Student Ratio	Score based on student faculty ratio	20%
Citations per Faculty	Score based on research performance factored against the size of the research body	20%
International Faculty	Score based on proportion of international faculty	5%
International Students	Score based on proportion of international students	5%

the full methodology is at:

http://www.topuniversities.com/university-rankings/world-university-rankings/2009/results

I'm happy that I contribute to the last category. (No consideration given to the football bowl prospects). Here are the ranks of a selected few:

Ranking..Name.........................................country.........score

....1.........Harvard........................................USA............100.0
....2.........University.of.Cambridge...............UK................99.6
....3.........Yale...............................................USA..............99.1
..11.........Columbia.......................................USA..............95.6
..80.........University.of.Washington..............USA..............71.1
..95.........National.Taiwan.University..........Taiwan.........68.9
105.........University.of.Minnesota................USA..............67.1
281.........National.Cheng.Kung.University...Taiwan.........45.7

As another indication that Taiwan should have UN recognition consider the
GDP(Gross Domestic Product) in dollars numbers divided by populations(per captia numbers) in which Taiwan is 42nd in the world:

1	Luxembourg	113,044
2	Norway	94,387
3	Qatar	93,204
4	Switzerland	68,433
5	Denmark	62,097
6	Ireland	60,510
7	United Arab Emirates	55,028
8	Iceland	53,058
9	Netherlands	52,500
10	Sweden	52,181
11	Finland	51,588
12	Austria	50,039
13	United States	47,440
14	Belgium	47,289
15	Australia	46,824
16	France	46,037
17	Kuwait	45,920
18	Canada	45,085
19	Germany	44,729
20	United Kingdom	43,734
21	Italy	38,996
22	Singapore	38,972
23	Japan	38,457
24	Brunei	37,053
25	Spain	35,117
26	Cyprus	32,745
27	Greece	32,105
—	Hong Kong	30,726
28	New Zealand	30,030
29	Israel	28,409
30	Bahrain	27,248
31	Slovenia	27,149
32	Portugal	23,041
33	The Bahamas	22,359
34	Oman	21,646
35	Czech Republic	20,760
36	Malta	20,281
37	Trinidad and Tobago	19,870
38	South Korea	19,136
39	Saudi Arabia	18,855
40	Slovakia	17,646
41	Estonia	17,532
42	Taiwan	16,988
104	China	3,259
105	Iraq	3,007
178	Liberia	216