Globalization in the 21st century has brought innumerable challenges and opportunities to universities and countries. Universities are primarily concerned with how to ensure the quality of their education and how to boost their local and global competitiveness. The pressure from both international competition and public accountability on universities will continue to increase the importance of university ranking (UR) and university quality assurance (UQA). The purpose of this paper is to point out that the current higher education evaluation and accreditation in Taiwan have helped the universities in Taiwan to achieve quality assurance and move to a world-class university (WCU) in the 21st Century. In this paper, the roles of UR and UQA as well as internal quality assurance (IQA) and external quality assurance (EQA) are discussed first. Then, the status of higher education institutional and program evaluations in Taiwan are presented. Finally, three challenges facing higher education institutional and program evaluations are pointed out as follows: (1) Quality culture has not been well formed, (2) Faculty and staff feel overloaded, and (3) The try-out of self-conducted and external program evaluation is off the track. In order to achieve UQA and move to a WCU in the 21st century, all stakeholders of UQA in Taiwan should think globally and act locally to overcome the above challenges as soon as possible. (Contains 3 figures.)