National Taiwan University (NTU) President Lee Si-chen expressed hope Saturday that the government will continue promoting a project to develop some of the nation's universities into some of the best in the world, the first five-year stage of which will expire at the end of 2010. Thanks to the project, NTU recently achieved 95th place in the Higher Education league table of the London Times newspaper, up from 124th in 2008 and marking the first time a Taiwanese school has ranked among the world's top 100 universities on such a list. Lee said he hopes the project will go on forever and that with funding, he believes NTU can become one of the world's top 50 or even top 10 universities. He made the remarks at a ceremony to present the results of the five-year, NT$50 billion (US$1.54 billion) project aimed at boosting the quality of local academic institutions. Minister of Education Wu Ching-chi, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company Chairman Morris Chang and Ministry of Education (MOE) Department of Higher Education Director Ho Cho-fey attended the event. NTU's new ranking is seen as an encouraging result, as one of the project's goals is to cultivate top-level universities and research centers in global terms. Under the program, the government has allocated NT$10 billion per year to subsidize applied universities and research institutes in efforts to improve their educational facilities and research quality. In response to Lee's call, Wu promised that the plan will indeed continue and noted that it has the firm support of President Ma Ying-jeou. 