Malaysian public varsities fail to make top 100 Asian universities ranking

The Times Higher Education Asia University Rankings 2014 shows that Malaysian universities are still not on par with other universities in Asia. – The Malaysian Insider pic, June 19, 2014.

The decline in global rankings of Malaysia’s public universities continues, this time in the Times Higher Education Asia University Rankings 2014 released today where no local tertiary institution made it to the top 100.

Five countries were represented in the top 10 of the Asian university rankings – Japan, Singapore, Hong Kong, South Korea and China. Even India made outstanding progress with 10 institutions in the top 100, compared with only three last year.

The Middle East was also well represented, with  universities from Iran, Israel, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia and Turkey making the list.

Thailand made the grade too, “but there is no place for Malaysia”, Times Higher Education noted about the Southeast Asian nation where tertiary education has become a significant industry.

Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, which was ranked number 87 last year, did not feature in the ranking this year.

University Of Tokyo  emerged top among Asian universities followed by the National University of Singapore.

University of Hong Kong, Seoul National University and China's Peking University clinched the third, fourth and fifth spots respectively.

Thailand has two universities in this year's ranking, King Mongkut's University of Technology, Thonburi,  which rose five places to joint 50th, and Mahidol University, which dropped 21 places to 82nd spot.

Singapore has two highly placed universities in the ranking, NUS at second spot and Nanyang Technological University at 11th position.

Hong Kong was named the star performer by THE, given its size, and the fact that it had six universities the top 50 of the ranking.

In April, Malaysian public universities were also left out of the this year’s ranking of the annual Times Higher Education Top 100 Universities under 50 years old.

Four Asian universities were ranked among the top 10 of the world’s young universities, including South Korea's Pohang University of Science and Technology which took the top spot, Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) (third placing), Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (4) and Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (5).

Malaysia failed to get on the list for the second year running. In the first rankings list in 2012, UKM was ranked 98th.

The country was also absent from the Times Higher Education World Reputation rankings list released in March, losing out to other Southeast Asian countries.

Responding to the failure of local public universities to make the list in this year’s Times Higher Education Top 100 Universities under 50 years old, Education Minister II Datuk Seri Idris Jusoh had said that the decline did not reflect the local tertiary education levels in the country.

He said emphasis should be placed on the entire learning process rather than rankings alone.

“Rankings don’t mean everything, although we can improve (our performance). We must be realistic when aiming for a position,” he said.

The nation's continuous failure to feature in any university rankings despite a huge education budget every year has not gone down well with the opposition, which has taken Putrajaya to task over the miserable performance.

The Education Ministry received RM38.7 billion in 2013 and has been allocated RM54 billion this year – the biggest allocation yet.

- TMI