National Taiwan University
National Taiwan University is a national public research university with its main campus in Taipei, Taiwan. Founded in 1928 during Japanese rule as Taihoku Imperial University, the seventh of the Imperial Universities of the Empire of Japan, it is the oldest university in Taiwan and is supervised by the Ministry of Education.
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 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, 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", 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 college classes consisted of "lectures" taught by professors, assistant professors, and other faculty. By 1945, it had five colleges with a total of 114 lectures. The university's first president was Japanese historian , a graduate of Tokyo Imperial University who was appointed to the presidency on March 16, 1928. Japanese scholar Toyohachi Fujita 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 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, 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 is located in the Gongguan neighborhood of Daan District, Taipei City, and 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, in addition to the Old Main Library, the College of Liberal Arts, and the Administration Building. 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. The majority of campus buildings built after World War II are a hybrid of Chinese and Western architecture, 20 of which were designed by architect Wang Da-hong.
Other
The university has four additional campuses throughout Taiwan: the Shuiyuan Campus ; the College of Medicine Campus ; the Yunlin Campus ; and the Zhubei Campus. The university also governs farms, forests, and hospitals for education and research purposes, including: visiting professor residences ; the NTU University Farm ; the Wenshan Botanical Garden ; the Experimental Forest Office ; and the Experimental Forest. The total area of NTU exceeds 340 square kilometers, accounting for one percent of Taiwan's total land area.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, 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.