The Ranking of Research Funding among Universities in Taiwan.

Abstract

With the current trend that universities around the world have gradually stepped into higher education systems of popularization, there has been more diversity in universities; hence it has become necessary to increase the transparency of university governance. Since that university classification or university ranking is a powerful mechanism to demonstrate the diversity of an institute, the rankings of research funding have become desirable and also of great value. The main purpose of this study is to analyze the rankings of research funding among universities in Taiwan, and make relevant suggestions based on the findings. A secondary data analysis was conducted on the data obtained from the database of National Science Council, in order to develop the rankings of research funding among 164 universities in Taiwan. Based on the results, the conclusions are as follows: (1) The top three universities which won the funding of the National Science Council Research Project with the best overall strength were National Taiwan University, National Cheng Gung University, and National Chiao Tung University; (2) The top three universities which won the funding of the National Science Council Research Project with the best average faculty strength were National Tsing Hua University, National Chiao Tung University, and National Taiwan University. It is suggested that, when rating the strength of a university to win the research funding, both overall strength and average faculty strength should be considered to avoid the unfairness towards universities of smaller scale. (Contains 8 tables.)