Abstracts The study was designed to achieve three purposes : the first was to explore the categories of universities in China, Netherlands, Taiwan, Japan, United Kingdom and United States. Second one was to build an evaluation model of performance indicators of colleges & universities in terms of three functions : research, instruction and service¡Fand to figure out a model of factorial structure which could grasp the conditions of colleges & universities. Finally, to categorized each college & university in Taiwan accordingly. In order to achieve the above aims, the researcher adopted questionnaire survey as the major research method. Two questionnaire were filled out by three groups of samples - scholars majoring in higher education, the administrators in Section of Higher Education, Ministry of Education, and college deans in nine different academic fields. The total percentage of response was 49.59%. The following six findings have been concluded : 1.There are two reasons for the categorization of colleges & universities in most other foreign countries ¡V natural formation or man-made. Titles of each category was given accordingly. 2.The subjects of this study were in great agreement with what the most important evaluation indicators were, but a trivial discrepancy toward the indicators for service function existed. 3.The theoretical model of performance indicators for colleges & universities was in good fittness for actural data. It could help understand the performance of a higher education institution. 4.The background variables of colleges & universities was significant in influencing the categories, they beloged to, e.g. public or private, scale of institution or number of professors, history of the institution. 5.The researcher, through the method of hierarchical cluster analysis, combined the mean of raw scores and standard score to categorize colleges & universities in Taiwan. 6.According to the deans of colleges & universities, four categories were suggested for colleges & universities in Taiwan. Finally, ten suggestions were raised to the authority in charge of higher education institutions, general colleges & universities in Taiwan and future research. Keyword : functions of colleges & universities, categories of colleges & universities, evaluation indicators of colleges & universities