千禧年前後，世界主要的高等教育政策雖各有不同的方向與重點，但皆有一相似之處，即在於學術卓越的追求及將少數大學提升至世界一流水準的努力，此一現象又以東亞國家特別顯著，韓國、中國大陸、日本及我國都有類似的拔尖計畫。「世界一流大學」的指標及排序也陸續出現，首先出現的是由上海交通大學製作並於2003年發表的「世界大學學術排行榜」，由英國《時報高等教育增刊》製作的「世界大學排行榜」也於2004年發表。世界大學排行的出現提供「世界一流大學」更清晰的定義、「卓越政策」更明確的目標。因此，在拔尖之外出現了合併求卓越、為「世界一流大學」量身打造新大學的策略，前者以英國曼徹斯特大學為代表，沙烏地阿拉伯的阿不都拉國王科技大學則是後者的典範。本文旨在探討過去20年來，追尋世界一流大學的拔尖、合併及新設三種策略模式，並以韓國及中國大陸的相關政策做為拔尖模式的探究對象、以英國的曼徹斯特大學做為合併模式的個案、以阿不都拉國王科技大學做為新設模式的典範，以為我國相關政策研擬之參考。

Over the past two decades, the higher education policy in major countries shared a similar trend, that is, the emphasis of academic excellence and the establishment of world class universities rather than equity. This trend could be observed in East Asian countries such as China, Japan, Korea and Taiwan in particular. The worldwide university rankings, including those made by Shanghai Jiao Tung University and The Times Higher Education Supplement were published in the excellence frenzy. The indicators shed some light on the vague idea of "world class universities" and provided the excellence policy some more definite objectives. In addition to upgrading existing institutions, merging existing institutions and creating new institutions were also taken as strategies for the goal of establishing world class universities. The article aims to study the three strategic approaches with Korea and China as examples of upgrading approach, The University of Manchester as that of merging approach and King Abdullah University of Science and Technology as that of creating approach.