For the third year, the Cheers Magazine held a university-performance evaluation by the presidents of 140 universities in Taiwan, and announced the top-20 best universities the other day. Asia University (AU) is listed as No. 4 and was awarded on Feb. 08 together with the other four top-5 schools, including National Taiwan University of Science and Technology, and National Taiwan University, as announced by Ovid Tzeng, an academician of the Academia sinica, in the award granting ceremony. Specifically, the publisher of the magazine, Feng-Zhen Liu, praised AU in the ceremony as “being able to keep fostering excellence of school running and making great progress that is really an outstanding performance!” If only private universities are considered, AU is the No. 2 best in Taiwan according to the evaluation result, which is a great achievement because AU is the youngest university in Taiwan, only 16 years old so far.

“Having a good leader and good school-running strategies can accelerate the achievements of a university, as conducted by Asia University!” said the editor-in-chief of the Cheers Magazine, Zni-Fang Lu. She mentioned as well that with full supports from the board of directors and great efforts in school running, within less than 16 years AU is now internationally famous for its excellence in school runnung and performance. Specifically, she said that AU established the "Nobel Laureate Forum" from 2010, continuing invitations of a total of 14 Nobel Prize winners in various areas to visit AU, give speeches or hold seminars at the campus, giving the students and faculty members more chances to learn from the masters and go further in their academic careers. “This is really unique in Taiwan,” said Lu.

Editor-in-Chief Lu also said that from this year’s evaluation result, it can be found that two facts, “the rise of private universities” as well as “international connections,” are the most obvious factors leading to the excellency of the selected top-5 universities. Asia University is the most prominent example of this observation.

AU is the youngest in the Top-5 universities, only the 16 years old, but it grows very fast and steadily in university affair promotion in the past. AU President Jing-Pha Tsai said that it is really an honor to be ranked as a top-5 best university for the third time. He mentioned as well that AU has also been ranked by the THE (Times Higher Education) magazine in recent years to be in the lists of five differently-evaluated top-100 universities in the world, becoming a university with “five top-100 honors,” which is not seen yet in Taiwan.

“In addition, AU is ranked by US News & World Reports to be in the list of 1000 best universities in the world,” said President Tsai. He emphasized that AU aims to become an international university, and provides a total of seven ways for students to promote their international visions, namely, studying abroad, participating in academic exchanges, working as interns, joining volunteer programs, publishing papers in conferences, and taking part in international invention or design contests. “The key factors to career success for a student is language ability, professional ability, and communication ability,” mentioned Tsai further. Finally, President Tsai mentioned in the awarding ceremony that AU has received financial grants of the Teaching Excellence Programs from the MOE for 12 straight years by which AU has developed a lot of innovative teaching and R&D strategies, leading the the current excellency of school running and achievements. President Tsai pointedout as well that AU has just completed the construction of a university hospital and opened it to the public in the last year, which may be used as a teaching and research platform in addition to offering medical services to the local people in the great Taichung City area.