The challenges for establishing world-class universities in Taiwan

[[abstract]]Following China, Korea, and Japan, Taiwan began an initiative in 2005 to build world-class universities. The Ministry of Education (MoE) initiated a project called the Plan to Develop World-Class Universities and Top-level Research Centers. The project is often referred to as the “Five-Years-50-Billion Project” because the MoE will invest 50-billion New Taiwan dollars (US$1.64 billion) in the plan over a 5-year span. In the first round of review, the MoE selected only two universities (Taiwan and Cheng Kung) as the participants. The government’s policy has advanced from the discussion phase to the action phase to build world-class universities for the maintenance and growth of Taiwan’s economic power in the global market. This chapter focuses on the plan and its implementation through the 5-year span. Specifically, the following topics are addressed: at a national policy level, reviewing the national policy, strategy, and funding for establishing WCUs; at an institutional level, reviewing the mission, governance, administration systems, faculty personnel policy, resource allocation, and faculty workloads in different campuses; and the impact of the WCUs project, including formative evaluations at the national and institutional levels. This chapter shows how the WCUs project in Taiwan has been institutionalized and how the policy has been interpreted and adopted. In the last section, this chapter identifies the future challenges facing in universities.[[booktype]]紙本[[booktype]]電子