Malaysia has been left out of the World’s Top 500 Universities ranking for the fifth year in succession in the “Academic Ranking of World Universities ARWU 2007” just released by the Shanghai Jiao Tong University.
Singapore has two, Australia 17 and New Zealand five universities in the latest world university ranking, which is dominated by US universities with Harvard, Stanford, Berkeley and Cambridge occupying the top four places.
It would have been good news for Malaysia’s 50th Merdeka anniversary to demonstrate the success of the country’s universities to get out of the rut of mediocrity and return to the path of excellence and quality if Malaysia had managed to get listed among the World Top 500 Universities in the ARWU 2007 — but it is clear that all the talk of higher education reform has not borne fruit with the lack of political will to give top priority to meritocracy and academic excellence to scale the ranks of world-class universities.
The Higher Education Minister, Datuk Mustapha Mohamad should explain why no Malaysian university has been able to get ranked in the ARWU in the past five years and when he expects Malaysian universities to achieve such international recognition.
The statistics by country for the World Top 500 universities in the ARWU 2007 are:
USA 166
UK 42
Germany 41
Japan 32
China 25
Canada 22
France 22
Italy 20
Australia 17
Netherlands 12
Sweden 11
Spain 9
South Korea 8
Switzerland 8
Belgium 7
Austria 7
Israel 7
Finland 5
Brazil 5
New Zealand 5
South Africa 4
Ireland 3
Singapore 2
Greece 2
Hungary 2
Poland 2
India 2
Chile 2
Portugal 2
Argentina 1
Slovenia 1
Turkey 1
Egypt 1
Mexico 1
Total 508