A friend I know from my Taiwan days who is now at Hawaii University was invited to teach Finance at Guangzhou. It was very interesting to hear some of the cross cultural observations of the local Chinese students ("but, teacher, our great leaders say…" etc.) and the academic environment, so I was quite excited when [...]

Trying to figure out the top ranking universities in Asia? Let me help you out. Following is the best of the top world university rankings for the Asian academic universities analyzed for year 2009. Many of the leading rankings for 2009 still didn’t come out, but since I’ve been asked about this, I’ll post what [...]

It’s the Dilbert of academic life. PhD Comics is the little that helps keep me sane in the world of academic insanity. If you’re a PhD or post-doc student and you’re feeling none of this makes sense to you, it’s time that you get to know this. To illustrate just how powerful PhD Comics is, [...]

Having been here in Hong Kong University of Science and Technology for about a month I can now say that the university is very serious about what it’s doing. Honestly, I’ve never seen anything quite like it. The whole academic language revolves around publishing with the common usage of "top-tier journals" "high impact factors". Everything [...]

There are a few world university rankings that came out during the past few months and so it’s an opportunity to refresh my rankings watchlist for Asia’s best universities. Various other rankings posts include: Top Asian Academic Universities in World University Rankings 2009 Asian academic research and the top research universities in Asia 2007 Best [...]

Now that I know that I’ve been accepted to NCKU and NCTU in Taiwan, and that there’s the Taiwan scholarship to back that up, there’s the simple yet difficult issue of where I should go. There are so many small details and so much uncertainty that I’m sometimes not sure what the right direction is. [...]

What are the best research institutes in Asia and how do those compare to other universities around the world? Is Asian academic research different than that of the "west"? Where is Asian research going? Being interested in Asian academics this past year, I’ve noticed major differences in the way research is perceived in Asia as [...]