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I read this article (shown below) from NST and thought that the situation highlighted should have been expected since nothing much has been done to address the problems in our local varsities. Ministry of Higher Education with its new Higher Education Blue Print should do something fast and save our universities from dropping its standards and qualities. Producing quality graduates and enhancing research and development should be the main agenda and not merely setting up more and more universities when we barely have enough qualified academics to fill in the vacant positions.

KUALA LUMPUR: Malaysian universities are on a slippery slope. None of them made it to the top 200 placing in the Times Higher Education Supplement (THES)-Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) World University Rankings this year.

This poor showing comes on the back of a recent government survey of local public universities which found that none deserved a place in the outstanding category.

Last year, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia and Universiti Malaya made it to the top 200 in the THES-QS rankings.

UKM ranked 185th, up from the 289th spot in 2005, beating well-known universities like University of Minnesota in the United States and University of Reading, Britain. This year, it has fallen to 309th.

Similarly UM, which was ranked among the world’s top 100 universities three years ago, was in 169th position in 2005 and tied with University of Reading in the 192nd spot last year. It has dropped to the 246th spot.

Universiti Sains Malaysia has fallen to 307 from 277 last year.UKM and UM vice-chancellors attributed their fall to the new methodology used to calculate rankings this year.”Even the National University of Singapore (NUS) has dropped to the 33rd spot when it was always within the top 10,” Universiti Malaya vice-chancellor Datuk Rafiah Salim said.

“The way I look at it, smaller countries like Malaysia are bound to lose out as THES has introduced new criteria which is peer review and has changed the citation and list of publications.”

Rafiah said with more than 3,000 universities getting ranked by THES annually, Malaysian universities had to improve if they wanted to remain on top of the list.

“If we want to compete with some of the top universities in the world, first we have to be in the same league.

“Right now, we are not. One way to overcome that is through adequate funding.”

She said NUS received an annual funding of S$1.2 billion (RM2.7 billion) a year compared to UM’s RM400 million annual budget.

University Kebangsaan Ma-laysia vice-chancellor Datuk Dr Sharifah Hapsah Syed Hassan Shahabuddin said: “We need to improve but we are not doing that fast enough.”

As for international institutions, American and British universities dominate the rankings for the top 100 universities in the world.

In fact, all 10 top universities are from the two countries.

Harvard University (US) leads the pack, followed by University of Cambridge (UK), Yale University (US) and Oxford University (UK).

The highest-ranking Asian university is Japan’s University of Tokyo.

Besides the NUS in 33rd place, Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University is in 69th spot.

The THES-QS rankings began in 2004 and have since attracted a great deal of comment, reaction and feedback.

Calculations for the rankings are based on data gathered through peer and recruiter reviews, international faculty ratio, international students ratio, student faculty ratio and citations per faculty.

THES is a newspaper based in London that reports specifically on issues related to higher education while QS, or Quacquarelli Symonds Ltd, is an international careers and education specialist.

Meanwhile, the Higher Education Ministry has instructed the vice-chancellors of all public universities to focus on academic reputation as the main strategy to improve.

Minister Datuk Mustapa Mohamed said it was clear that academic reputation based on publications, working paper presentations and academic networking at high impact conventions were the main factors that could help to propel efforts to enhance the quality of Malaysia’s higher education system.

“For the past two years, the vice-chancellors have given special attention to the THES rankings and have begun efforts to upgrade local higher learning institutions,” he said in response to the THES report.

The THES-QS ranking is available at www.topuniversities.com.