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Web-only Exclusives November 30, 2000 From Our Correspondent: Hirohito and the War A conversation with biographer Herbert Bix From Our Correspondent: A Rough Road Ahead Bad news for the Philippines - and some others From Our Correspondent: Making Enemies Indonesia needs friends. So why is it picking fights? |
LETTERS AND COMMENT
The affairs of Asia
In all spheres of human activity,
To see the world from an Asian perspective,
To be Asia's voice in the world"
Mission statement, 1975
IT IS A PITY that you couldn't list famous universities in China like Peking and Tsinghua ["Asia's Best Universities," COVER STORY, May 15]. Though I am now in the U.S., I believe that our Peking University and Tsinghua can beat most of the top 10. How could this rating then reflect the real situation in Asia? Ratings should not be associated with any political question. Anyway, I like your method of comparing the universities of Asia.
Steve Li
via the Internet
IN TAIWAN, COLLEGE STUDENTS are selected through the Joint Entrance Examination (JEE), which is for all high school graduates wanting to pursue further studies. The universities select students based on their performances/scores in the JEE as well as their preference of institution. Everyone on the island knows that National Taiwan University (Taida) is easily the first choice of students and only the top 5% get enrolled there. It is surprising then that Asiaweek placed other schools ahead of Taida on "student selectivity." This is an apparent mistake in your otherwise very good report.
Herman Lee
via the Internet
Taiwan
DESPITE REPEATED REQUESTS, TAIDA did not furnish us with most of the data needed to measure student selectivity. Our standard procedure in such a case is to use the lowest score of a school from the same country. But, aware of Taida's elite reputation, we instead chose to use the average scores of the other universities from Taiwan for Taida. - Editors
CHINA'S SOUTHEAST UNIVERSITY, WHICH ranked 48, is best known for its studies in engineering. How could you compare it with multi-disciplinary universities?
Quong Wong
via the Internet
U.S.A.
GIVEN THE OPTION - as were other specialized schools - Southeast chose to be in the multi-disciplinary list. - Editors
WE ARE VERY GRATIFIED that Postech [Pohang University of Science & Technology] was ranked top among specialized science and technology schools. But one point we found confusing. University of Tokyo scored one for "student per internet access point" and accordingly was ranked number one in this category. Postech also scored one but was ranked 22.
Park Kyoung Nam
Pohang University of Science & Technology
South Korea
WE MADE A MISTAKE, inadvertently reversing the rankings for Internet access in the science & technology list. Postech should have been No.1. But this did not affect the final score: the ratio, not the ranking, was used to compute totals. - Editors
CORRECTION
IN "AGONY AND ANGER" [THE NATIONS, May 22], we should have said four students were killed in Jakarta on May 12. The error occurred during processing.
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