Our varsities have lost their glory

DAP supremo Lim Kit Siang says that the government lacked political will to revamp Malaysia's education system.

PETALING JAYA: Malaysia’s absence from this year’s Times Higher Education university rankings is a sign of lost glory, according to DAP.

Party supremo Lim Kit Siang accused the government of lacking the political will to better the country’s education system.

“A lot of talk of revamping and overhauling the system hasn’t come to anything concrete,” he said.

He said that Malaysia’s universities were once highly recognised as esteemed institutions of public learning. Those days, he added, were long gone.

The country, he said, also seemed to be losing out to its regional neighbours, including Singapore and Australia.

Today, the Times rankings showed that Singapore had two universities in the rankings, with the National University of Singapore at 29th place and the Nanyang Technological University at 86th.

Thailand was the only other Southeast Asian nation to have a university on the list, with the King Mongkut’s University of Technology, at 351st place.

“It highlights the challenging situation if we are to regain our international competitiveness,” Lim said.

Earlier today, Higher Education Minister Khaled Nordin said that Malaysia’s absence might be due to local varsities only concentrating on research papers as late as 2007.

He said that the Times study based its evaluation on data gathered over a period of 10 years.