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In response to the global competitiveness in higher education, the government, in recent years, has encouraged Taiwan colleges and universities to seek international accreditation, which raises several questions, such as jurisdiction over national accreditation, a single set of standards for local and global quality assurance, demand for the mutual recognition of review outcomes, etc. With the looming pressures for change that international accreditation will likely pose on a Taiwan national framework of quality assurance, multiple impacts on institutions and national accrediting agencies in Taiwan are now beginning to be increasingly felt. Hence, this paper examines current academic international accreditation programs and institutions, recognizes Taiwan’s accrediting organizations, and analyzes the challenges that institutions and national accrediting agencies are facing.

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The Higher Education Evaluation and Accreditation Council of Taiwan (HEEACT) was established in 2005 and began to accredit 76 four-year comprehensive universities and colleges in Taiwan in 2006. Commissioned officially with a dual mission, HEEACT has been encouraged to conduct various ranking research projects, including global and national ones starting in 2007. One of the HEEACT's most influential rankings is 'Performance Ranking of Scientific Papers for World Universities'. Given the fact that more and more national accrediting bodies are developing ranking systems, these dual roles like in the HEEACT case have led to many discussions and raised severe criticism in the quality assurance community due to their different aims and approaches. Therefore, the purposes of the paper are to provide an understanding of the functions of varying quality assessment tools in higher education, to analyze their impact on Taiwan higher education and to examine the conflicting roles of HEEACT while conducting both accreditation and rankings over the institutions that have been granted the two major national Research and Teaching Excellence Programs.

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Cross-border higher education resulting in the increased mobility of students, academic staff, programs, institutions and professionals has grown considerably in global times. Therefore, how to ensure that the quality of academic programs has met the local and international standards simultaneously has become a great challenge in many nations. In recent years, the need for close cooperation of quality assurance agencies and acceptance of review decisions called 'Mutual recognition' has been promoted by several international quality assurance networks of higher education. Established in 2003, the European Consortium for Accreditation in higher education (ECA), which aims to achieve mutual recognition of accreditation decisions among member countries, is the first such initiative in the world. The main purpose of the paper is to understand the definition of mutual recognition, examine the role of the international quality assurance network in the promotion of mutual recognition and analzye the ECA, ARCU-SUR, and Asia-Pacific Quality Network cases. The implication of mutual recognition for higher education quality assurance of Asian nations and related issues derived from other regions will be discussed in the conclusion.

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Since the start of the 21st century, university rankings have become internationalised. Global rankings have a variety of uses, levels of popularity and rationales and they are here to stay. An examination of the results of the current global ranking reveals that well-reputed world-class universities are amongst the top ranked ones. A major concern for university administrators in many parts of the world is how to use the global rankings wisely in their mid-term and long-term strategic planning for building their institutions into world-class universities. Four major global rankings have been developed: the Academic Ranking of World Universities, the World University Rankings, the Webometrics Ranking of World Universities and the Performance Ranking of Scientific Papers for World Universities. The main purpose of this paper is to explore the most influential indicators in these global university rankings that will affect the rank mobility of an institution. Based on an analysis of correlation coefficients and K-means clustering, a model of strategic institutional planning for building a world-class university is proposed.

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As massification of higher education developed, employment challenges in changing labour markets aroused the attention of scholars globally. An interdisciplinary approach called world-system theory is applied by scholars from the social sciences, history, anthropology and cultural studies. This study applied the theory in a bibliometric analysis of graduate employment research using R and CiteSpace. It identified the main characteristics (e.g. authors and countries) of relevant research, investigated the social and economic context of certain milestone publications and visualised research hot spots. World-system theory, as a macrosociological approach to describing the world economy and social system, is innovatively applied in illustrating the findings of the current work. Results indicate that core countries not only are economically influential but also dominating the academic research. Scholars in semi-peripheral and peripheral countries are encouraged to establish transnational networks and foster academic collaborations.

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Driven by global rankings and national quality assurance (QA) initiatives, Taiwan's higher education institutions were encouraged to develop strategic plans and initiatives, in order to improve graduate student employability. The purpose of this study is to explore the polices and strategies adopted by Taiwanese higher education institutions, with a particular focus on 'employability', in terms of standards and indicators of [Quacquarelli Symonds and Times Higher Education Supplement] QS ranking and Higher Education Evaluation and Accreditation Council of Taiwan (HEEACT) programme accreditation in 2017. This paper analysed strategic plans and self-assessments reports from 20 Taiwanese universities in order to determine the impact of ranking and QA on employability initiatives and associated implications for institutional policy.

The study presents three major findings. First, the emergence of global ranking and national quality assurance systems pressured Taiwanese universities to situate several employability initiatives within their institutional strategic plans. Second, Taiwanese universities applied varying approaches to the integration of graduate employability into institutional policies and strategic plans, according to ranking and national accreditation standards. Third, the gap between institutional policy making and actual implementation of employability initiatives exists in the Taiwanese context.

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The engagement of quality assurance in the recognition process of overseas qualifications became an emerging issue in Asian nations with the increased interest in student mobility in the region in the 21st Century. This study explores the links between quality assurance and qualification recognition, and approaches adopted within national regulatory frameworks in the Asia Pacific region from the perspective of quality assurance agencies. Three major findings are obtained. First, governments are primarily responsible for academic qualification recognition in Asia. Second, professional qualification recognition is heavily restricted by governments due to nationalism and protectionism within the job market. Third, a divergence model between quality assurance and qualification recognition exists in the Asian context.

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Joint degree programs have gained popularity in East Asia, due to the growth of transnational higher education in the region since 2000. However, the external quality assurance (QA) and accreditation of joint degree programs is a challenge for QA agencies, as it normally involves the engagement of several institutions and multiple national accreditation procedures. The purpose of this study is to explore current QA approaches to joint degree programs in Europe and East Asia from the perspectives of QA agencies. There are four major findings from the study. First, East Asian countries tend to stipulate national regulations for a joint degree program. Second, an external QA mechanism for joint degree programs has not yet been developed in East Asian nations. Third, the adoption of international accreditation as the popular approach for joint degree programs in business fields in Asia raises the serious issue of national jurisdiction over higher education. Fourth, the European Consortium for Education's (ECA) single accreditation mode is highly recommended by QA agencies.

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