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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.

Campus

Main campus

The main campus of National Taiwan University occupies 114.72 hectares (283.5 acres) in the Da'an District of Taipei, with its principal entrance at 1 Roosevelt Road, Section 4. The site includes most of the university's colleges and administrative buildings. It houses some of the country's best-preserved examples of red brick Japanese colonial architecture.

The campus developed from the grounds of an agricultural and forestry school established by the Government-General of Taiwan in 1919, which was successively reorganized before being incorporated into Taihoku Imperial University in 1928. Much of the historic core constructed after the imperial university's establishment survives along Royal Palm Boulevard, an east–west avenue that forms the principal axis of the campus. Its original plan was influenced by American Beaux-Arts, Renaissance, and neoclassical planning principles, with a Baroque axis and terminal vistas organizing the central campus. Royal Palm Boulevard itself was laid out around 1932, when horticultural faculty and farm staff planted royal palms and other tropical and native vegetation throughout the grounds. 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 buildings that predate or date from the early years of Taihoku Imperial University remain prominent features of the campus. 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 Administration Building, completed in 1926 for the predecessor Taihoku Advanced Academy of Agronomy and Forestry, is a Taipei city-designated heritage site constructed primarily of red brick and distinguished by a portico supported by four Corinthian columns. Across Royal Palm Boulevard, the College of Liberal Arts building was completed in 1929 for the Faculty of Literature and Politics and is another city-designated heritage site. Its exterior combines ribbed tile with Romanesque elements, including arched windows and doorways, gables, and ornamental corner tiles characteristic of the imperial-era buildings lining the boulevard. The former main library was begun in 1929, with its stacks and reading room completed in 1931, and now houses the Gallery of NTU History.

The campus continued to expand following the reorganization of the imperial university as National Taiwan University in 1945, gradually introducing modernist forms alongside the earlier eclectic architecture. The Civil Engineering Building, completed in 1955, was among the first postwar structures to depart substantially from the earlier campus vocabulary, using horizontal lines associated with the International Style rather than the stronger vertical emphasis of the buildings along Royal Palm Boulevard. The First Student Activity Center, designed by Taiwanese architect Wang Da-hong in 1961 and completed in the early 1960s, combined modern construction with features drawn from traditional Chinese architecture, including red, black, and gold surfaces, courtyards, porticos, and folded roofs.A renewed period of campus planning beginning around the 1980s sought to reconcile later development with the surviving imperial-era plan. The present Main Library, completed in 1998 at the eastern end of Royal Palm Boulevard, contains five stories above ground and one below and incorporates arched windows and other architectural motifs derived from the earlier campus buildings. More recent additions have introduced contemporary architecture into the historic campus plan, including the College of Social Sciences complex designed by Japanese architect Toyo Ito. Its Koo Chen-Fu Memorial Library is enclosed on three sides by floor-to-ceiling glass and supported internally by 88 irregularly arranged columns, with curved bamboo bookshelves intended to give the reading room the appearance of a grove. The Humanities Building, one of the newest major buildings near the entrance to campus, uses exposed concrete and a perforated brick façade facing Royal Palm Boulevard, with large-span bridges connecting portions of the structure. In 2024, the building received first place in the public construction and space revitalization category of Taiwan's Golden Stone Awards.

Academics

The university is organized into 17 college-level units: the colleges of Liberal Arts, Science, Social Sciences, Medicine, Engineering, Bio-Resources and Agriculture, Management, Public Health, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Law, and Life Science; the School of Political Science and Economics; the International College; the College of Design and Innovation; the Graduate School of Advanced Technology; the Center for General Education; and the School of Professional Education and Continuing Studies. Across these units, the university has 61 departments and 152 graduate institutes and offers as many as 8,000 courses each semester. The regular academic year is divided into two semesters. In 2024, NTU enrolled 34,483 students, including 17,432 undergraduates, 13,272 master's students, and 3,779 doctoral students. Most students at the university come from wealthy families with higher socioeconomic status.

Undergraduate education

NTU enrolled 17,432 undergraduate students in 2024, accounting for slightly more than half of its student body. Undergraduate education is organized principally through academic departments within the university's colleges, supplemented by university-wide general education and interdisciplinary programs. The university's published general-education requirements for students admitted since 2016 call for at least three credits of Chinese literature, six credits of foreign-language study, and 15 credits of liberal-education courses.

In 2025, NTU introduced a revised curriculum known as General Education 5.0, retaining an eight-area structure while emphasizing interdisciplinary study, contemporary issues, sustainability, reflection, and collaborative learning. Its eight areas are Literature and Arts, Historical Thinking, World Civilization and Globalization, Philosophy and Moral Thinking, Citizenship and Social Analysis, Mathematics and Computer Science, Physical Science, and Life Science. The 2025 revision renamed the former World Civilization area to World Civilization and Globalization and replaced Mathematics, Digital Competence, and Quantitative Analysis with Mathematics and Computer Science.

NTU has also established academic units specifically for interdisciplinary undergraduate study. The College of Design and Innovation, established in 2015 and commonly called the D-School, administers a trans-disciplinary bachelor's degree as well as programs in leadership and creativity and entrepreneurship. The International College, established in 2021, offers the Global Undergraduate Program in Semiconductors alongside interdisciplinary graduate programs in agriculture and genomics, biodiversity, smart medicine and health informatics, and disaster-risk reduction and resilience.

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.

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

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.

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