'When will UM be on par with its Singaporean twin?'

They were twins, who later became separated. And while one has gone on to become an academic superstar, the other is in the doldrums.

The situation has saddened PKR director of strategy Rafizi Ramli, who is demanding for answers.

He was responding to Quacquarelli Symonds' world university rankings, which recognised the National University of Singapore (NUS) as Asia's best university.

In a press statement today, Rafizi said the situation called for drastic reforms to Malaysia's higher education system.

"A lot of people don't know that NUS has the same roots as UM because both were established as University of Malaya in Singapore following the recommendations by the Carr-Saunders Commission.

"In 1959, University of Malaya had two campuses - the original campus in Singapore and a new campus in Kuala Lumpur. By 1962, the campuses were made independent of each other, becoming UM in Kuala Lumpur and NUS in Singapore.

"After 50 years, even though they came from the same root, UM is not ranked among the top 100 universities in the world, while NUS had gone on to become Asia's best.

"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 said.

In view of this, Rafizi mooted that the first thing the authorities should do is to restore academic freedom in all public universities and provide autonomy to the university senates.

"Restore the freedom for critical thinking among students and stop activities or programmes that curtail these. This includes propaganda programmes by the National Civics Bureau (BTN) and similar bodies," he said.

He also urged the authorities to allow the university administrators to be picked based on their academic merit and not based on their political affiliations.

He believes that with these few simple steps, UM's prestige would improve in a mere short span of 10 years.

Rafizi, who himself had stellar academic performance in the past, also revealed that he would be visiting NUS in November to learn more about how the university maintains its standards.