Jeffrey J.P. Tsai, the President of Asia University (AU), went to the UK to attend the UK-Taiwan Higher Education Forum on September 20th, and visited famous universities such as Oxford, Queen Mary, and Imperial College of London to proactively attract top international professors. 

Mon-Chi Lio, a Deputy Minister of the Ministry of Education, led a team which consisted of 44 representatives from 17 top-ranked universities in Taiwan to meet foreign representatives from 30 UK universities at the UK-Taiwan Higher Education Forum. The forum brought together participants from governments, partner organizations, and universities to discuss the high education (HE) system interchanges between Taiwan and the UK. Besides presidents and vice presidents from both sides, Andrew Zerzan, the Director of Education at British Council, and Ralph Rogers, the Director of the British Council Office in Taiwan, also attended this event. Moreover, the topics of this forum had many aspects of issues, including university autonomy and internationalization strategies, collaborative researches in the UK and Taiwan, and bilateral student mobility and exchanges, etc.

Mr. Lio pointed out that the Ministry of Education hopes to build a long-term partnership in HE with the UK. Currently, there were 259 partnership agreements signed by 66 universities in Taiwan and 125 universities in the UK, and more than 7,000 UK-Taiwan joint research papers were published between 2014 and 2018. Therefore, the cooperation on HE between Taiwan and the UK has a strong foundation.

Mr. Dame Janet Beer, the President of the University of Liverpool, deeply recognized during his visit to Taiwan last year that Taiwan is the important academic research partner for the UK, especially in the fields of physics, genetics, and medicine. Moreover, Mr. Chris Chang, the Vice President of the University of Portsouth, stated that international strategies for universities in the UK are not the same, and they provide a good opportunity to seek further international cooperation for Taiwanese colleges.

Mr. Steven Shute, the Vice President of the University of Sussex, mentioned that global challenges need global solutions. International research partnerships with various countries are beneficial to all and even can increase the numbers of research citations. Andrew Zerzan, the Director of Education at the British Council, said that we consider our students’ learning experiences to be very important, and encourage them to make use of good quality learning environments in Taiwan. In addition, we also welcome Taiwanese students to study in the UK.

Besides the forum, in this trip President Tsai also arranged visits to the University of Oxford (UO), the Queen Mary University of London (QMUL) to meet with President Colin Bailey, and Imperial College London (ICL) to meet with Provost Ian Walmsley, respectively. The UO has been ranked as the best university in the Times Higher Education (THE) World University Ranking, and is the oldest university in the UK with 60% of the students coming from other English-speaking countries. Then, the QMUL was ranked No. 119 in the QS World University Ranking, and it also had a total of eight Nobel Laureate alumni and more than 35% of the students are international. And there are 20 Nobel Laureate alumni in the ICL with 50% of the students being from other countries. After visiting several universities, President Tsai et al. also went to Centre for Bio-Inspired Technology to understand how to apply biological technologies to healthcare researches.

At the end of the forum, the Ministry of Education provided assistances in matching the top scholars from Taiwan with those in the UK to attract the top international talents and increase international influence on higher education. Furthermore, all of the representatives from various universities discussed face to face and shared their experiences with each other. Finally, President Tsai pointed out that AU is recently ranked No. 842 in the world, No.11 and No. 4 of all and private universities in Taiwan, respectively, by the 2020 World University Ranking of THE report. In addition, based on the ranking list, AU is the No. 1 best of non-medical private universities in Taiwan. In the future, AU will continue to recruit scholars who are actively engaged in researches to create more eye-catching achievements in teaching, researches, and industrial and academic cooperations.