Meritocracy key to bridging NUS-UM gap, says Karpal

Malaysian universities will not be able to catch up with its Singaporean counterparts as long as it does not practice meritocracy, said DAP chairperson Karpal Singh.

“If that is not lacking (meritocracy), then I think the other things will fall in place. We must strive for meritocracy, competition and so many things,” he said.

Karpal (right) himself had graduated from the National University of Singapore (NUS) law school, class of 1967/68, about five years after it broke off from being a Universiti Malaya (UM) campus to become its own university.

He was commenting on the disparity in the world rankings between the two institutions, with NUS on the 24th place, and as Asia’s best public university, while UM dropped to 167th place.

Karpal also told Malaysiakini that the key to the performance of Singaporean universities is that they have better facilities than Malaysian universities, and have the ability to attract quality teaching staff.

“And to top it off, (its classes) are in English. The English language is the international language and I think that is one of the reasons why NUS is one of the best in the world,” he said.

In the annual Quacquarelli Symonds’ World University Rankings 2013/2014 released yesterday, none of Malaysia’s universities managed to clinch a position in the top 100, out of 800 universities ranked.

Instead, it reported that all but one of Malaysia’s public universities - Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM) - had worsened, although UM remains as Malaysia’s top university.

Meanwhile, the same report said NUS is now Asia’s best university after outdoing the previous top Asian university, the University of Hong Kong.

Noting the discrepancy between NUS and UM’s performance despite sharing the same roots, Pandan MP Rafizi Ramli had called foracademic freedom and university’s autonomy to be restored.

“This is a reality which must be faced openly without political or racial prejudice because education standards and the ranking of public universities influence our standards of life and the nation's competitiveness,” he had said yesterday.