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The UK Times Higher Education (THE) Report announced the other day that 18 universities in Taiwan are ranked in the list of top-1000 best universities in the world by 2020, and both Asia University (AU) and China Medical University (CMU), which is the allied university of AU, are included in the list. Based on the ranking list, it reveals that AU is ranked No. 842 in the world,  No. 11 and No. 4 of all and private universities in Taiwan, respectively; and the No. 1 best of only non-medical private universities in Taiwan. Regarding to the result, AU has made a better progress in the ranking listing than the other non-medical universities in Taiwan.

The Office of R & D at AU pointed out that this year’s THE ranking in the world of AU has moved up 92 places and AU’s ranking in the nation has also moved up eight places because AU’s five performance indicators in the THE survey, including teaching, researches, citations, industry incomes, and international reputations, gained significant growths; especially, the performance indicator “research” grew by 50%. Among more than 1,700 universities from 92 countries, a total of 36 universities in Taiwan entered the ranking list of the best 1,300 universities. Moreover, there were also a total of 18 universities in the nation selected the top 1,000 universities.

Prof. Chang-Hai Tsai, the chairman of the Board of the Directors of AU, said that today's management of university operations faces the fact that Taiwan's child population has declined. An innovative change is an important way of improvement for AU to solve the population problem. For example, Prof. Mien-Chie Hung, an academician of Academia Sinica and a professor of the University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center, was invited back to Taiwan as the President of the CMU this year. Another example was that AU provides a gateway to knowledge for students by building an affiliated hospital. These measures not only improve the quality of teaching, researches, and internationalization, but also strengthen the competitiveness of teachers and students in the workplace. As a result, the teaching results in the CMU and AU have improved and gained a high reputation in international rankings.

“AU that has been established for only 19 years grew up hard in adversity, especially when most international universities in the world are in fast progresses. This year, AU has great improvements in various rankings because of successful transformations of the affiliated hospital and hiring of 35 faculty members that enhance its teaching and research,” said AU President Jeffrey J. P. Tsai. President Tsai also mentioned that in order to follow the strategies of the College of Artificial Intelligence, AU developed many AI courses and related research centers on the following topics: (1) big data, (2) fin-tech and block-chain technology, (3) AI, (4) 3D printing, (5) food safety, (6) precision medical, (7) prevention and treatment of internet addiction, (8) eye, and (9) innovation and circular economy. In addition, AU is also working hard on attracting talented people and guiding students to do researches.

President Tsai said that AU continues to be ranked high in various world university rankings and enhances its international capabilities in the past six years. Moreover, some of the research centers at AU have academic cooperations with the research institutes and centers in various countries, including Harvard University, the University of Missouri, and Georgia Institute of Technology in the USA; Kyoto University and Osaka University in Japan; National University of Singapore and Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. In this semester, there were more than 800 international students studying for the bachelor, master, and doctoral degrees. In addition, AU also opens a series of English courses, hoping to attract more foreign students to study at AU and strengthen the internationalization of AU.