UM becomes first local uni to make it to Asia’s top 40

PETALING JAYA: Universiti Malaya has become the first Malaysian university to make it to the top 40 Asian universities, in the latest ranking compiled by global university performance surveyor Times Higher Education.

In its 2019 World University Rankings, Universiti Malaya is placed 38th from 46th last year among some 400 Asian universities, although it is still in the 301-350 band in a list of 1,000 universities worldwide.

Other local universities in the list are Universiti Teknologi Petronas at 98th place in the Asian list, Universiti Tunku Abdul Rahman (111), Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (125) and Universiti Sains Malaysia at 150, a position shared with Iran’s Mashhad University of Medical Sciences.

The majority of universities in the top 10 places are from China. Tsinghua University overtook the National University of Singapore, which is at second place in the Asian list and ranked 23rd in the world.

Prominent universities in the West continue to be at the top of the list, led by the University of Oxford in first place, followed by University of Cambridge and Stanford University.

Chinese universities have recorded a rise in global rankings, which THE attributes to a grand plan to collaborate with universities abroad as part of Beijing’s massive Belt and Road Initiative.

“While China’s higher education strategy is often characterised by its focus on competition, with a range of excellence initiatives pouring additional funding into a select number of institutions over the past two decades, one of the most interesting recent developments in the nation is an initiative that is ostensibly primarily about collaboration,” it said.

THE’s rankings use 13 performance indicators, and universities are judged in terms of teaching, research, knowledge transfer and international outlook. - FMT