In latest rankings, Malaysian public varsities lose out to Singapore, Hong Kong

Malaysian public universities have again been outclassed by Singapore and Hong Kong in the latest annual QS University Rankings for Asia, with only Universiti Malaya (UM) ranked at 32 in the Top 100 list.

The ‎2014 global rankings by British firm QS Quacquarelli Symonds have the National University of Singapore (NUS) topping the list of Asian universities.

Other local universities that made the Top 100 were Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM) in 56th place, Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM) in 57th spot, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (66), and Universiti Putra Malaysia (UPM) in 76th place.

Increased research productivity has boosted the positions of all but one Malaysian university from last year, QS head of research Ben Sowter said in a statement.

"Malaysia's top institutions have increased their scores for research productivity this year, and are among the most international in the region,” he said.

‎UKM and USM are up four and two places respectively, while International Islamic University Malaysia (IIUM) rose to 145th, having ranked just outside the top 150 list last year.

The only Malaysian institution in the top 150 to have lost ground is UPM, which dropped four places to 76.

Sowter said the strengthening of inter-regional collaboration and exchange programmes within Asean may have helped Malaysian universities improve their ranking.

Malaysia’s top seven institutions all ranked higher than in 2013 in terms of research productivity while the top four have also all improved their student to faculty ratio, said QS.

UM ranked No. 1 in Asia for its proportion of international exchange students and made the top 20 for all four of the "internationalisation" criteria measured in the rankings.

The leading eight Malaysian institutions all made the top 40 for their proportion of international students.

In an immediate response, DAP’s Bukit Bendera MP Zairil Khir Johari said despite the progress made, it was nothing to boast about given that one of the major factors identified in the improved performance was the internationalisation criterion.

“While improvement in research productivity and faculty ratio is good, greater internationalisation, which is simply a measure of the number of international students, may not necessarily be a positive trait.

“The question of quality thus arises. This is because while our universities have experienced an influx of Middle Eastern and African students, it may well be that Malaysia was chosen for financial and cultural reasons rather than academic ones,” Zairil told The Malaysian
Insider.

He said that Malaysia perhaps provided alternative options for those unable to enter European universities, and this was not necessarily a positive trend.

“What Malaysian universities need are top students from the region. Instead, it is our own top students who end up in universities, such as National University of Singapore and Nanyang Technological University,” said Zairil.

NUS, with the support of a S$16.1 billion (RM42 billion) government scheme to improve
its performance in science, technology and innovation, topped the QS university ranking for Asia, pushing Hong Kong University of Science and Technology from first to fifth place.

Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) is in second place, followed by University of Hong Kong and Seoul National University.

‎Rounding up the top 10 is the Chinese University of Hong Kong (6th), Nanyang Technology University (7), Peking University (8), Pohang University of Science and Technology (9) and the University of Tokyo (10).

“These rankings confirm the emergence of Singapore and Korea as the new major players within the region, denting the dominance of Hong Kong and Japan,” said Sowter.

“Both NUS and KAIST have benefitted from major government investment in research, while operating in English has helped them attain new levels of global engagement.”

In contrast, USM receives an extra grant of around RM80 million a year, which Zairil said has not been maximised by the university.

“This grant is meant to be extra funding for further research.

“Unfortunately, despite this extra grant, USM has still not managed to overtake UKM and UM in QS rankings every year for the past six years,” said Zairil.

He said the QS results also did not justify the classification of USM in 2008 as an Apex University, with the stated aims of making USM a "world-class university".

Among other Asian universities, China saw 13 of its top 20 institutions rise this year, though Peking University dropped three places to 8th, while Tsinghua remained at 14, said QS.

In contrast, 13 of Japan’s top 20 universities ranked lower than last year, with University of Tokyo dropping to its lowest ever position at 10.

“The after-effects of the financial crisis have made it harder for Japan to keep up with the improvements made by Singapore, Korea, Hong Kong and China,” said Sowter.

The criteria used by QS to rank the universities are academic reputation, employer reputation, student to faculty ratio, papers per faculty, citations per paper, internationalisation, student exchange programmes.

A total of 491 institutions were evaluated, 474 ranked and 300 published in the ranking.

Last month, Malaysian public universities were left out of the latest ranking of the annual Times Higher Education (THE) 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, KAIST (3), Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (4) and Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (5).

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

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

Malaysia'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 for the miserable performance.

The Education Ministry received RM38.7 billion in 2013 and has been allocated RM54 billion this year – the biggest allocation yet. – May 13, 2014.