National Taiwan University

National Taiwan University (NTU; Chinese: 國立臺灣大學; pinyin: Guólì Táiwān Dàxué) is a national research university in Taipei, Taiwan. Founded in 1928 during Japanese rule as Taihoku Imperial University (Japanese: 臺北帝國大學, romanized: Taihoku Teikoku Daigaku), it was the seventh Imperial University of the Empire of Japan and is the oldest university in the country. The university has three major campuses in Taipei and operates satellite campuses across the country. It hosts over 200 degree programs and consists of 17 colleges, including the College of Medicine, and 61 departments, 152 affiliated research institutes, and more than 100 other national research centers, such as the National Taiwan University Hospital. Its financial endowment of NT$67.3 billion (US$2.24 billion) is the largest in the country and one of the largest in Asia. National Taiwan University has institutional affiliations with the Harvard–Yenching Institute, the Max Planck Society, the Institute for Advanced Study, and produces the Performance Ranking of Scientific Papers for World Universities. It publishes academic works through its university press, the National Taiwan University Press. In 2015, NTU formed a university system with the National Taiwan University of Science and Technology and National Taiwan Normal University. Notable graduates of the university include five presidents of the Republic of China, six vice-presidents of the Republic of China, more than 120 members of Academia Sinica, and 25 members of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, in addition to Nobel Prize, Turing Award, and Wolf Prize laureates. It has also produced the heads of other major universities, such as the University of California, Berkeley, and the University of California, Santa Barbara. History Imperial University (1928–1945) During the Japanese rule of Taiwan (1895–1945), the Empire of Japan established the modern Taiwanese education system by installing educational institutions that used Western-style academic systems. Den Kenjirō, the Governor-General of Taiwan, proposed the establishment of a university in Taiwan in 1922 and Japanese prime minister Tanaka Giichi presented a bill titled "Establishment of the Taiwan Imperial University" to the Cabinet of Japan on February 25, 1928. It was planned to be located on the grounds of the Taihoku Senior School of Agriculture and Forestry in Taihoku Prefecture. On March 16, 1928, National Taiwan University was founded as "Taihoku Imperial University" (Japanese: 台北帝国大学, romanized: Taihoku Teikoku Daigaku; Chinese: 臺北帝國大學; pinyin: Táiběi dìguó dàxué), the seventh of the Japanese Empire's Imperial Universities. It was Taiwan's first and only university and primarily served to promote Japanese culture, assimilate the local population, and direct students to professions useful to colonial expansion. The first freshman class was inaugurated on April 30, 1928, with classes beginning on May 5. Of the 1931 graduating class, 41 students were Japanese and five were Taiwanese. The first faculties founded at Taihoku Imperial University were the Faculty of Literature and Politics and the Faculty of Science and Agriculture, totalling 59 students. Subsequently, the Faculty of Medicine was established in 1935 and the Faculty of Engineering was established in 1943. The Faculty of Science and Agriculture was divided in 1943 as two separate colleges: the Faculty of Science and the Faculty of Agriculture. Because the university was considered a part of expanding the Japanese colonial empire in the Pacific Ocean, it was supported by multiple Japanese scholars and received government research grants for funding policy programs. Taiwanese students could not compete with Japanese students since the university prioritized Japanese enrollment. From 1928 to 1943, the university's student body was approximately 80 percent Japanese and 20 percent Taiwanese. Of its more than 300 faculty members in 1940, all professorships but one were held by Japanese scholars. Taihoku granted degrees after a minimum of six years of study. College classes consisted of lectures taught by professors, assistant professors, and other faculty. By 1945, it had five colleges with a total of 114 lecture courses. The university's first president was Japanese historian Taira Shidehara (1928–1937), a graduate of Tokyo Imperial University who was appointed to the presidency on March 16, 1928. Japanese scholar Toyohachi Fujita (1869–1929) was appointed as the first dean of the Faculty of Literature and Politics while Kintaro Oshima was named the inaugural dean of the Faculty of Science and Agriculture. Enrollment years were shortened during World War II and university functions were limited following the American bombing of Taipei, which damaged its main gate and boulevard. National University (1945–present) After the Surrender of Japan in September 1945, the government of the Republic of China (ROC) assumed control of the university and initiated sinicization reforms. On August 15, 1945, the Kuomintang government appointed Lo Tsung-lo, a Japanese-educated academic, to oversee the transition of Taihoku's curriculum, teaching system, and faculties from its Japanese administration. At the time, the university had 1,614 faculty and staff members to teach 1,767 students, 351 of whom were Taiwanese. All Japanese students were later transferred back to Japan. Under the Kuomintang, the ROC government initiated a program of reforming all universities and colleges in accordance with Chinese models that incorporated American academics, administration, and organization, in addition to installing American curriculum and degree requirements. Reforms also had the goal of reversing the Japanization that had influenced Taiwan during Japanese rule. Universities and colleges were opened to Taiwanese students without restrictions; Taihoku Imperial University was renamed "National Taiwan University" in November 1945 and it was reorganized and expanded to six faculties: Liberal Arts, Law, Science, Medicine, Engineering, and Agriculture. Up to 500 students could enroll in each faculty and the enrollment period was standardized to four years as opposed to the Japanese system of three to six years. Under governor Chen Yi, however, the school received no government funding from 1945 to 1947, causing it to cease operations until Chinese historian Fu Ssu-nien assumed the presidency. Fu oversaw the abolition of the Japanese college-preparatory school system and, by the end of 1947, the university operated entirely on a Chinese higher education model. The university became the most prominent educational institution in the country, with more than 80 percent of all Taiwanese high school applicants listing the university as their preferred choice for college admission by 1977. In the following decades after World War II, National Taiwan University underwent rapid expansion. A night school was established to provide continuing education for adults in 1955 and the NTU Research Library was completed in 1968. The College of Management, the College of Public Health, and the College of Electrical Engineering were established in 1987, 1993, and 1997, respectively. The NTU Department of Law was expanded to the NTU College of Law in 1999 and the College of Life Science was established in 2003. In November 2003, the university consisted of ten colleges, 52 academic departments, 82 graduate institutes, 1,778 full-time faculty, and more than 27,000 students. By 2009, NTU grew to 54 departments, 100 graduate institutes (which offered 100 master's programs and 91 doctoral programs in total), and 25 research centers, including the Center for Condensed Matter Sciences, the Center for Biotechnology, the Japanese Research Center, and others. Campuses Main campus The main campus of National Taiwan University consists of 114.72 hectares (283.5 acres) in the Gongguan area of Daan District, Taipei City. It contains most of the university's departmental and administrative buildings. The main campus houses some of the country's best-preserved examples of red brick Japanese colonial architecture, most of which are located along the Royal Palm Boulevard that leads to the five-story National Taiwan University Library building (completed in 1998), in addition to the Old Main Library, the College of Liberal Arts, and the Administration Building. Of the campus buildings built after World War II, the majority are a hybrid of Chinese and Western architecture, 20 of which were designed by architect Wang Da-hong. The Royal Palm Boulevard, which anchors the university's central avenue, is designed in a Baroque architectural style. The boulevard forms three plazas along its axis—University Plaza, Fu Bell Plaza, and the Main Library plaza—which altogether function as student venues. Several historic landmarks and green spaces are located throughout the campus. The first is the red-brick Main Gate, completed in 1931, which marks the campus entrance. The gate retains much of its original appearance from the Taihoku Imperial University era and is designated a municipal heritage site. It leads to the University Promenade, an open plaza used for gatherings and public expression. Nearby is the College of Liberal Arts, constructed during Japanese rule in Romanesque fashion, houses the university's landmark Fu Bell which rings 21 times at the end of each school period. Another landmark is Fu Garden, originally established as an arboretum during the Japanese colonial period, which contains a monument and mausoleum commemorating former university president Fu Ssu-nien. Adjacent to the garden is the Old Main Library (1929), which today houses the Gallery of NTU History, a museum documenting the university's development. The campus also includes several natural and landscaped features. Drunken Moon Lake, originally used to regulate water flow from the Liugongjun irrigation canal, was redesigned in the 1970s with an arched bridge and pavilion and later renovated as an ecological lakeshore area. The Agricultural Experimental Farm, established prior to the founding of Taihoku Imperial University, remains an active research and teaching facility operated by the College of Bioresources and Agriculture. Other notable campus landmarks include the First Student Activity Center, designed by architect Wang Da-hong in a mixed traditional Chinese and modernist style and currently serving as a hub for student clubs and events; the Agricultural Exhibition Hall (1963), originally built to display Taiwan's agricultural achievements; and the modern College of Social Sciences building designed by Japanese architect Toyo Ito. Satellite campuses The university has four additional campuses throughout Taiwan: the Shuiyuan Campus (7.7 hectares, located in Zhongzheng District, Taipei); the College of Medicine Campus (located in Zhongzheng District); the Yunlin Campus (54 hectares, located in Yunlin County); and the Zhubei Campus (22 hectares, located in Hsinchu County). The university also governs farms, forests, and hospitals for education and research purposes, including: visiting professor residences (34 hectares, located on Yangmingshan, Taipei); the NTU University Farm (19.5 hectares, located in Xindian District, New Taipei City); the Wenshan Botanical Garden (5 hectares, located in Shiding District, New Taipei City); the Experimental Forest Office (25.9 hectares, located in Nantou County); and the Experimental Forest (33,310 hectares, located in Nantou County). The total area of all NTU campuses and properties is 34,166 hectares, or 1 percent of all of the land area in Taiwan. Organization and academics As of 2025, National Taiwan University consists of seventeen colleges, including Liberal Arts, Engineering, Science, Social Sciences, Political Science & Economics, Law, Bio-Resources & Agriculture, Management, Public Health, Electrical Engineering & Computer Science, Medicine, Life Science, General Education, the International College, the Graduate School of Advanced Technology, Design & Innovation, and Continuing Studies. They offer bachelor's degrees, master's degrees, and doctoral degrees in multiple disciplines and specializations across science, arts, and the humanities. Some majors are considered more competitive than others and require a higher score in the General Scholastic Ability Test or other national examinations. In recent years, medicine, electrical engineering, law, and finance have been the most selective majors. Most majors take four years to complete while the dental program and the medical program take six years to finish. Students are able to select courses offered by any of the colleges, with up to 8,000 courses made available for selection each semester. Undergraduate students are required to take a mandatory core curriculum, which is composed of courses in Chinese, English, physical education, and public service. The medical school also requires each of its students to take philosophy and sociology classes as well as seminars in ethics and thanatology. Military training is no longer an obligatory course for male students, but it is a prerequisite if they plan to apply to become officers during their compulsory military service. Most students at the university come from wealthy families with higher socioeconomic status. NTU is a member of the Association of Pacific Rim Universities, the Association of East Asian Research Universities, the Association of Southeast Asian Institutions of Higher Learning, the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business, and the European Union Centre in Taiwan. It also has partnerships with several American universities such as Washington University in St. Louis, which, since 2012, has funded NTU students to complete doctoral degrees at the university. In 2024, NTU and the University of Texas at Arlington began a partnership to host a dual master's degree program in architecture between the two universities. The International Chinese Language Program (ICLP), founded by Stanford University, is located at National Taiwan University. In 2021, the "International College" was established, primarily enrolling international students of foreign nationality and offering courses entirely in English. In July 2025, the Max Planck Society and the Institute for Advanced Study established the Max-Planck-IAS-NTU Center, a research center dedicated to studying particle physics, cosmology, and geometry on campus. University rankings Overall rankings National Taiwan University is widely considered to be the best university in Taiwan. Most high school applicants generally consider NTU to be their most preferred choice for college. NTU was ranked 63rd worldwide in the QS World University Rankings 2026, 140th worldwide in the Times Higher Education World University Rankings 2026, 203rd worldwide in the US News 2022-2023, and 201-300th worldwide in the ARWU 2022. The Aggregate Ranking of Top Universities (ARTU), which sorts universities based on their aggregate performance across THE, QS, and ARWU, ranked NTU 135th worldwide in 2022. With other peering references of academic ranking, NTU also releases NTU World Universities ranking annually on the Double Ten Day, the National Holiday of the Republic of China. Subject rankings In the QS and ARWU subject rankings, NTU is ranked first in Taiwan in the majority of subjects. In the THE Subject Rankings, NTU is ranked first in Taiwan in all subjects. List of presidents The president heads the university. Each college is headed by a dean and each department by a chairman. Students elect their own representatives each year to attend administrative meetings. National Taiwan University Chen Wen-chang: 8 January 2023 – present Kuan Chung-ming: 8 January 2019 – 7 January 2023 Tei-Wei Kuo (interim): October 2017 – January 2019 Yang Pan-chyr: June 2013 – June 2017 Lee Si-chen: August 2005 – June 2013 Chen Wei-jao: 22 June 1993 – June 2005 Kuo Kuang-hsiung: March 1993 – June 1993 Sun Chen: August 1984 – February 1993 Yu Chao-chung: August 1981 – July 1984 Yen Cheng-hsing: June 1970 – July 1981 Chien Szu-liang: January 1951 – May 1970 Shen Kang-po: December 1950 – January 1951 Fu Szu-nien: January 1949 – December 1950 Chuang Chang-kung: June 1948 – December 1948 Lu Chih-houng: August 1946 – May 1948 Lo Tsung-lo: August 1945 – July 1946 Taihoku Imperial University Kazuo Ando (安藤一雄): March 1945 – August 1945 Masatsugu Ando: April 1941 – March 1945 Sadanori Mita: September 1937 – April 1941 Taira Shidehara: March 1928 – September 1937 Notable alumni National Taiwan University has produced notable alumni in politics, business, academia, science, medicine, and numerous other fields. Graduates of the university disproportionately comprise a majority of the political and business elite in Taiwan. As of 2024, about half (48.7%) of all academicians of Academia Sinica are NTU graduates and 70 percent of all Taiwanese members of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences (NAS) are. 25 graduates of NTU are members of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences. Five of the eight presidents of the Republic of China are graduates of the university: Lai Ching-te, the current president of Taiwan; Tsai Ing-Wen, the first woman to be elected to the position; Ma Ying-jeou; Chen Shui-bian, the first member of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) to hold the office; and Lee Teng-hui, the first native-born Taiwanese to become president. In addition, six out of the 13 vice-presidents of the Republic of China have graduated from NTU, including Lee Teng-hui, Lien Chan, Annette Lu, Wu Den-yih, Chen Chien-jen, and Lai Ching-te. The heads of major political parties—such as Eric Chu and Cheng Li-wun, chairs of the Kuomintang; Ko Wen-je, former mayor of Taipei and founder of the Taiwan People's Party (TPP); and Huang Kuo-chang, chairman of the TPP—also graduated from NTU. In science, graduates include Yuan T. Lee, who received the 1986 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for the development of reaction dynamics, and Andrew Yao, who was awarded the Turing Award in 2000 for his contributions to cryptography and computation. Other scientific achievements by alumni include contributions to chemical synthesis by chemist Chi-Huey Wong, winner of the 2014 Wolf Prize in Chemistry, and contributions to biosynthesis by botanist Shang Fa Yang, winner of the 1991 Wolf Prize in Agriculture. Alumnus Chenming Hu was awarded the IEEE Medal of Honor in 2020; Simon Sze the J. J. Ebers Award in 1991; and George Kuo the 1994 William Beaumont Prize for the discovery of the Hepatitis C virus. Notable mathematicians who graduated from NTU include Fan Chung, the Paul Erdős Professor in Combinatorics at the University of California, San Diego; Wu-Chung Hsiang, topologist and professor at Princeton University; and Horng-Tzer Yau, Merton Professor of Mathematics at Harvard University. In academia, alumni include two chancellors of American universities: Chang-Lin Tien, chancellor of the University of California, Berkeley, and Henry T. Yang, chancellor of the University of California, Santa Barbara. Other academic administrators include Ambrose King, vice-chancellor of the Chinese University of Hong Kong, and Vincent Chang, vice-chancellor of BRAC University. Academicians of Academia Sinica include political scientist Chu Yun-han; economists Hu Sheng-cheng, Cyrus Chu, Cheng Hsiao, Yu Tzong-shian, Mai Chao-cheng, and George C. Tiao; and legal scholars Hu Fo and Hungdah Chiu. Many of the university's graduates have gone on to found or head major companies, including Quanta Computer's Barry Lam, Mediatek's Tsai Ming-kai and Garmin's Min Kao. Foreign alumni of the university include Canadian philosopher Roger T. Ames, who graduated from NTU with a master's degree in philosophy in 1972; British diplomat David Coates, ambassador of the United Kingdom to Ivory Coast; Roel Sterckx, Joseph Needham Professor of Chinese History at the University of Cambridge; and South Korean philosopher Do-ol, who earned a master's degree from NTU. Notes See also National Taiwan University Hospital List of universities in Taiwan Education in Taiwan Imperial Universities Taiwanese Bunun Ancestral Remains Repatriation Case References Additional sources Chou, Chuing Prudence; Ching, Gregory (2012). Hawkins, John N.; Jacob, W. James (eds.). Taiwan Education at the Crossroad: When Globalization Meets Localization. International and Development Education (INTDE) (1st ed.). Palgrave Macmillan. doi:10.1057/9780230120143. ISBN 978-1-349-29345-2. Cheung, Han (June 9, 2025). "Touring Taipei's Universities". TAIPEI: A City of Bright Minds. Vol. 40. Department of Information and Tourism, Taipei City Government. Wu, Wen-Hsing; Chen, Shun-Fen; Wu, Chen-Tsou (1989). "The Development of Higher Education in Taiwan". Higher Education. 18 (1): 117–136. doi:10.1007/BF00138963. ISSN 0018-1560. JSTOR 3447445. Chiang, Been-huang (January 1, 2008). NTU at 80; Going for the Top 100. National Taiwan University 80th Anniversary Special Edition. National Taiwan University Press. ISBN 978-986-01-5622-5. Lo, William Yat Wai (February 17, 2014). University Rankings: Implications for Higher Education in Taiwan. Springer Science & Business Media. ISBN 978-981-4560-35-1. Lu, I-Jung Grace (December 30, 2020). "Historical Development of Higher Education in Taiwan from Past to Present". In Hou, Angela Yung-Chi; Chiang, Tung-liang; Chan, Sheng-Ju (eds.). Higher Education in Taiwan: Global, Political and Social Challenges and Future Trends. Springer Nature. ISBN 978-981-15-4554-2. Xu, Ren-hao (2024). "Moving Beyond the Neoliberal Agenda? The Story of University Research in Taiwan". In Y.S. Low, Remy; Egan, Suzanne; Bell, Amani (eds.). Using Social Theory in Higher Education. SpringerLink. pp. 250–260. doi:10.1007/978-3-031-39817-9. ISBN 978-3-031-39816-2. Wang, Tay-Sheng (April 2018). "NTU Highlights" (PDF). No. 68. National Taiwan University Press. Retrieved November 27, 2025. Kishida, Yuka Hiruma (October 3, 2019). Kenkoku University and the Experience of Pan-Asianism: Education in the Japanese Empire. Bloomsbury Publishing. ISBN 978-1-350-05787-6. External links Official website in English