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2021 QS Subject Rankings: NCCU Leaps into the Top 100 Worldwide, Communication & Media Studies Ranks First Nationally

Date : 2021-03-23 Department : Office of International Cooperation (OIC)
【Article by Office of International Cooperation】
The recently released Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) 2021 World University Subject Rankings included 13 NCCU subjects. Listed for the first time, the subject of Classics and Ancient History at NCCU was ranked among #51-70 worldwide. As a subject, Philosophy at NCCU also entered the rankings for the first time, placing among the top 200 worldwide, and ranked second nationally. These results reflect the broad international recognition for NCCU’s achievements in literature, history and philosophy. Communications and Media Studies was ranked among the top 150 worldwide, which stands for the highest ranking of this academic field in Taiwan.

The QS World University Rankings covers 5 fields and a total of 51 subjects, based on 4 indicators including academic reputation, employer reputation, citations per paper, and high-indexed papers. The rankings assess 1,440 universities in the world, spanning 51 professional disciplines and 5 academic fields. This year, NCCU was ranked among the top 150 universities in the world, with subjects of Politics and International Studies and Modern Languages respectively ranked second and third in Taiwan. Business Management and Accounting and Finance were both ranked among the top 200 globally, while Sociology and Linguistics were both ranked among the top 250, making NCCU as reputed and competitive in these academic disciplines as Kyoto University in Japan, Sorbonne University in France, University of Bern in Switzerland, Johns Hopkins University in the USA, University of Lancaster in the UK, and Free University of Berlin in Germany. These exceptional achievements in the humanities and social sciences are the result of the concerted and consolidated efforts of our teachers, students and administrative staff.

Distinguished Professor May-Shine Lin, Vice President for the Office of International Cooperation, NCCU noted that such international rankings are inevitably subject to technical partiality, if not Anglocentric bias, and particularly favor universities focused on science, technology and medicine. European Union officials have also recently questioned the appropriateness of similar types of international university rankings. However, relatively speaking, QS subject rankings can provide insight into the relative strengths, achievements and international reputations of each school. NCCU’s outstanding performance in literature, history and philosophy reflects the school’s active international promotion of research in sinology, Chinese cultural studies, and history studies over the past two years. In particular, the distinctive Luo Chia-luen International Sinology Lecture series brought together scholars from Liberal Arts, History and Philosophy, along with top scholars from home and abroad to deepen academic exchanges in international sinology, establishing NCCU as center for global sinology research. In addition to Sinology, NCCU is also making great progress in expanding Southeast Asian and Austronesian studies, and is actively integrating such domains as literature, law and business with information technology to cultivate outstanding multidisciplinary talents. The College of Informatics, to be established in August this year, will collaborate with various colleges and departments to cultivate new cross-disciplinary talents who are well-versed in humanities, social concerns, and technological information engineering. These new breakthroughs in higher education will inject new energy into academic fields at home and abroad, and will help accurately reflect NCCU’s status in global subject rankings. However, the quantitative mechanism of the world university ranking itself needs critical introspection and objective examination. It must be used with great caution. Our university is neither limited nor confined by the standard university ranking appraisal, and will continue to strive for excellence and improvement in the instruction as well as research of the humanities and social sciences.

Note 1: Classics and Ancient History, in the Western academic context, refers to the studies of Greek and Roman archaeology, languages, literature, philosophy and history. In non-Western regions, it tends to refer to the classics and historical studies prior to the 18th or 19th centuries.
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