Malaysian universities are still in the international backwaters with the country fighting a losing battle to enhance international competitiveness in the quest for academic excellence and university quality.
For the fourth year in succession, Malaysian universities have been omitted in the January 2007 Webometrics Ranking (WR) of 3,000 Premier Universities, based on their commitment to Web publication and to the Open Access initiatives.
The National University of Singapore tops the Asian universities in the WR, ranked No. 139 internationally, with the Nanyang Technological University ranked No. 18 among the top Asian universities. Chulalongkorn University of Thailand has again confirmed that it is recognised internationally as in various recent world universities rankings as of superior quality to all the 17 Malaysian universities.
The top 25 Asian universities in the latest WR are:
Top Asian Universities
Asia Rank University World Rank
1 National University Singapore 139 2. National Taiwan University 150 3 Keio University 152 4 University of Tokyo 157 5 Beijing University 190 6 Chinese University of Hong Kong 216 7 University of Hong Kong 218 8 Kyoto University 239 9 National Chiao Tung University 300 10 Tsinghua University China 336 11 Seoul National University 337 12 University of Tsukuba 338 13 HK Univ of Sc & Technology 362 14 Korea Adv. Inst of Sc & Tech 365 15 Nagoya University 367 16 Tokyo Institute of Technology 368 17 Tohoku University 376 18 Nanyang Techl Univ Spore 450 19 National Cheng Kung University 468 20 City University of Hong Kong 470 21 Chulalongkorn University 505 22 Hong Kong Polytechnic Univ 511 23 National Sun Yat Sen Univ 513 24 United Nations University 522 25. Zhejiang University 529
The country distribution of the top 500 WR Premier Universities are:
Rank Country Top 500
1. USA 211 2 Germany 51 3. UK 40 4 Canada 27 5 Spain 20 6 Australia 18 7. Italy 13 8 Sweden 10 9 Netherlands 9 10 Switzerland 7 10 France 7 10 Japan 7 10 Finland 7 14 Austria 6 15 Denmark 5 15 Brazil 5 15 Belgium 5 18 Norway 4 18 Czech Rep 4 18 Israel 4 18 Ireland 4 18 Hong Kong 4 18 Portugal 4 24 Taiwan 3 24 New Zealand 3 26 China 2 26 Singapore 2 26 South Korea 2 26 Mexico 2 26 Greece 2 26 Hungary 2 26 Turkey 2 33 Estonia 1 33 Argentina 1 33 South Africa 1 33 Serbia 1 33 Iceland 1 33 Chile 1 33 Russia 1 33 Slovenia 1
Unless there is urgent universities reform, Malaysian universities face the great risk of disappearing from the international radar of quality universities altogether.
Malaysian universities were completely left out in the new Newsweek Top 100 Global Universities ranking announced in August last year , stuck in the world’s lowly academic divisions — three years after the Prime Minister, Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi’s call for world-class universities and “towering Malaysians”.
For four successive years, none of the 17 Malaysian public universities made it into the Shanghai Jian Tong University’s 500 Top Universities Rankings.
As for the Times Higher Education Supplement (THES) World University Ranking of 200 Best Universities, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM) and University of Malaya (UM) are struggling to keep inside the list, as their present rankings of No. 185 for UKM and No. 192 for UK are most precarious and perilous.
Did the unusual Friday Cabinet meeting yesterday discuss the latest proof of the failure of the Abdullah administration in the battle to enhance Malaysia’s international competitiveness to produce quality human resources by raising the global standing of the quality of Malaysian universities, and what should be done to address the failures of the universities in the past three years — or it merely provided further evidence of a “half-past six” Cabinet totally unaware of the conspicuous absence of Malaysian universities in the latest Webometrics Ranking of 3,000 Universities?