Malaysia has fallen completely out of the list of the world’s Top 200 Universities this year in the 2007 Times Higher Education Supplement (THES)-Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) World University Rankings.
This is a national shame, especially as occurring during the nation’s 50th Merdeka anniversary and it must serve as the latest warning to the national leaders to end their complacency and delusion that Malaysia is becoming more competitive globally when the reverse is actually the case.
Last year, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM) and Universiti Malaya (UM) were listed at the tail-end of the Top 200 in the THES-QS ranking, and I had repeatedly warned both in and out of Parliament that Malaysia risks being pushed out of the 200 Top Universities ranking unless there is the political will to check brain-drain and restore meritocracy and excellence to Malaysian academia.
It gives me no satisfaction but extreme sadness to see my dire prediction come true!
UKM was ranked 185th last year, up from 289th spot in 2005, but has now fallen to 309th place.
For UM, once the nation’s premier university, it is a sorry tale of continuous decline. It was ranked among the world’s top 100 universities in 2004 at 89th position, fell to 169th in 2005 and 192nd placings in 2006, and is now out of the Top 200 league, having fallen to 246th spot!
Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM), which was ranked as the only “outstanding” five-star university in a recent government survey, has fallen to 307th spot from 277 last year. In 2005, USM was in the 326th spot.
It is pathethic that the reaction from the University of Malaya Vice Chancellor Datuk Rafiah Salim is just one of excuses as to why UM had been thrown out of the top 200 Top Universities league rather than a commitment to check the decline and restore the nation’s former premier university to its previous repute as one of the world’s top universities .
Rafiah attributes UM’s poor placing to the new methodology used to calculate rankings this year, pointing out that “Even the National University of Singapore (NUS) has dropped to the 33rd spot when it was within the top 10″.
Rafiah is right that NUS has dropped in this year’s ranking but wrong in saying that NUS was “within the top 10″ last year.
NUS was ranked No. 19 last year and has dropped to No. 33 — a fall of 14 placings. In contrast, UM has dropped 54 places.
Even more pertinent, UM at 246th spot is now 213 places behind NUS (No. 33)! Why is this so when both universities had started off on almost the same footing half-a-century ago?
Despite the use of a new methodology in calculating the ranking this year, Singapore has been able to maintain two universities in the Top 200 list — NUS at No. 33 and Nanyang Technological University at 69th, while Malaysia’s two universities in the Top 200 list last year had been edged out completely. Why is this so?
#1 by MidClassMsian on Saturday, 10 November 2007 - 5:54 pm
The TUANs are not afraid of the dropping of standards in our universities, they don’t care. The DON’T care.
Like every Ah Meng, Ah Lian, Siva and Punita, I sat for STPM in order to gain a place in one of the local universities.
Matrikulasi is nowhere near STPM in terms of its intellectual quality and level of difficulty. Period.
Meritocracy in this land is non-existent, right from primary school all the way to tertiary education.
In 1991, my batch of students who took part in SPM exam created some very interesting stats. There were 9 students who scored 7 or more As but failed to score a credit in Bahasa Malaysia, some even with 8 straight As. Also, about 34% of studens fail to score at least a credit for BM. The result was definitely not in normal distribution. Interesting, because in the same school, the other exam center produced some totally different (and normal) results where majority of the students scored between C3 and C6; thus, a perfectly normal bell curve.
For the earlier-mentioned exam center above, students had to look for alternatives as they were not qualified to study in Form 6 (in gov schools). For those whose family could afford, left this country; the rest decided to waste one more year for SPM to get at least a credit in BM, some decided to get a job then only decide what to do.
For your information, in those who left the country, one is now a qualified petroleum engineer in USA, one is a neuro surgeon in Singapore, one is a lawyer in England………the list goes on.
Well, who cares????
The excellent gov of this country can only take care of some people, but at the expense of other people. All are Malaysians. Unfortunately, different treatments are applied.
I have been struggling in looking for the answers for all these funny, silly, appalling, stupid, ignorant, shiok sendiri, arrogant, dishonest……….policies.
I think some people are just too afraid to lose, not even at the cost of this country’s development and maturity. They would not want to give anything away to other races. The longer they wait, they more their own people are hurt. Somehow they are just so afraid to lose, kiasi. Or maybe the stake is just too much now, there is simply no way back anymore. The rhetoric of asking the people t be independent and don’t rely on assistance are just bullshit. That person knows it is almost impossible to reverse the situation. Bad habits die hard, and bad habits are getting worse.
Its not only in education, but all aspects of our lives, ie business opportunity, welfare, etc.
I just hope something will happen to right the wrongs. Unfortunately, that thing might not be pleasant and can even be revolutionary.
#2 by pulau_sibu on Saturday, 10 November 2007 - 11:10 pm
UTM is happy to be within top 500! the VC mentioned about bringing in more international professors, but from where? from Indonesia and all these Islamic countries with all the unknown international professors? go and get the most well known ones
#3 by Wang on Sunday, 11 November 2007 - 5:25 am
Quoted from The Australian (06-Nov-2007):
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,22727653-12332,00.html
“However the THES ranking system has come under fire following a new analysis of it and its main rival, Shanghai Jiao Tong University’s Academic Ranking of World Universities.
Writing in the November edition of the Journal of Higher Education Policy and Management, Macquarie academics Paul Taylor and Richard Braddock said the Jiao Tong system was “clearly superior”.
“In emphasising research, it (the Jiao Tong) focuses on one of the essential functions of a university … in contrast with the THES system, which gives great weight to (subjective) peer review, the Jiao Tong system concerns itself with genuine criteria rather than mere symptoms of excellence,” the pair said.”
#4 by chgchksg128 on Monday, 12 November 2007 - 10:44 pm
I found a blog that has the full ranking download with analysis.
http://2hard2lie.blogspot.com/
http://2hard2lie.blogspot.com/2007_11_01_archive.html