Universities
Malaysia losing out even to...
..Thailand, Indonesia and Philippines in global ranking, says Lim Kit Siang.
Nov 17, 2008

Malaysia is losing out in the unrelenting battle in global university rankings, losing out even to Thailand, Indonesia and Philippines – something completely unthinkable in the first three decades of our nationhood.

This was stated by opposition leader Lim Kit Siang, Democratic Action Party (DAP) in a speech in Tawau.

For the second consecutive year, He said Malaysia had fallen completely out of the list of the world’s Top 200 Universities this year in the 2008 Times Higher Education Supplement (THES) - Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) World University Rankings. He said: -

The national shame of Malaysia falling completely out of the list of the world’s Top 200 Universities this year in the 2008 Times Higher Education Supplement (THES) - Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) World University Rankings is being compounded by the ignominy of Malaysian universities losing out not only to top universities in Singapore, China, Japan, Hong Kong, Taiwan and South Korea but also to other South East Asian nations like Thailand, Indonesia and Philippines.

The 2008 THES-QS rankings should be a “wake-up” call to the Higher Education Minister and the Cabinet of the advanced crisis of higher education in Malaysia, but I have given up hope that the Barisan Nasional government is capable of “waking up”!

For the second consecutive year, there is not only not a single university in the 2008 THES-QS Top 200 Universities list, there is also not a single university in the separate ranking of Top 100 Universities for five subject areas – Natural Sciences, Social Sciences, Arts and Humanities; Life Sciences and Biomedicine; and Technology.

Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM) and Universiti Malaya (UM) were in the 2006 Ranking, placed No. 185 and 192 respectively. UKM plunged to 309 last year and improved to 250 this year while UM fell to 246 last year improving slightly to 230 this year – but both remain outside the Top 200 Universities ranking.

The government named Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM) as the Apex University but it has a dismal international rankings after being included once in the Top 200 Universities list – No. 111 in 2004, No. 326 in 2005, 277 in 2006, No. 307 in 2007 and No. 313 in 2008.

It is both sad and pathetic that our Apex University, the USM, at No. 313 ranking, is not only left far behind in South East Asia by: -
Singapore (National University of Singapore No. 30 and Nanyang Technological University No. 77),
Thailand (Chulalongkorn University No. 166),
Indonesia (University of Indonesia No. 287) and
Philippines (Ateneo de Manila University No. 254 and University of the Philippines No. 276).

Until last year, Malaysian universities were all ranked well ahead of the Indonesian universities, but in the 2008 THES-QS World Top Universities ranking, Indonesian universities are catching up with Malaysian universities in leaps and bounds.

Last year for instance, the three top Indonesian universities were all ranked behind the Malaysian universities. They were
University of Indonesia (UI) No. 395,
Bandung Institute of Technology (ITB) No. 369 and
Gajah Mada University (UGM) No. 360,

By comparison, top three Malaysian Universities ranked as follows:-
Malaysian universities University of Malaya (UM) No. 246,
Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM) No. 307 and
Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM) No. 309.

In this year’s ranking:-
University of Indonesia has improved by 108 placings to be ranked as No. 287,
Bandung Institute of Technology No. 315 and G
ajah Mada University No. 316.

This means that in the 2008 THES-QS Ranking, University of Indonesia (No. 287) has narrowed the gap with University of Malaya (No. 230) and Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (No. 250), while ahead of Malaysia’s apex university, Universiti Sains Malaysia (No. 313), University Putra Malaysia (No. 320) and Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (No. 356).

The performance of Malaysian universities in the 2008 THES-QS Top 100 lists for the five subject areas are even more dismal, with not a single university making into the five lists for two years consecutively although Malaysia secured four of these 500 prestigious slots in 2006 - University of Malaya was ranked 49 in Social Sciences and 95 in Natural Sciences, UKM was placed No. 62 in Natural Sciences, and University Sains Malaysia placed No. 96 for Life Sciences and Biomedicine.

For the 2008 THES-QS ranking, National University of Singapore (NUS) (No. 30) is ranked among the Top 100 Universities for all the five categories while Nanyang Technological University (NTU) (No. 77) is ranked among the Top 100 universities for three categories, viz: Technology (No. 26); Life Sciences & Biomedicine (No. 78) and Social Sciences (No.89).

NUS is ranked No. 11 for Technology; No. 17 for Life Sciences and Biomedicine, No. 31 for Natural Sciences; No. 18 for Social Sciences and No. 30 for Arts & Humanities.

NTU is ranked No. 25 for Engineering & IT; No. 99 for Natural Sciences and No. 88 for Social Sciences.

Even Thailand’s Chulalongkorn University is rated among the Top 100 Universities for two categories – Technology (No. 86) and Social Sciences (No. 72); Indonesia’s Bandung Institute of Technology rated as among the Top 100 universities for Technology (No. 90) and two universities in Philippines ranked among the Top 100 Universities for Arts and Humanities - Ateneo de Manila University (No. 79) and University of the Philippines (No. 82).

After being placed in four of the 500 slots in the five Top 100 Universities for the five subjects in 2006, Malaysian universities has been conspicuously missing from all the five listings of Top 100 Universities for the five categories for the past two years.

There are over 30 “elite of elite” universities, which are not only ranked in the Top 200 Universities list, but also ranked in every one of the five Top 100 subject list.

Universities in the Asia-Pacific region which are in this exclusive “elite of elites” list are:

(Ranking in Top 200 Universities in bracket)

Australia
ANU (16)
Sydney U (37)
Melbourne U (38)
Queensland U (43)
New South Wales U (45)
Monash U (47)

Japan
Tokyo U (19)

Hong Kong
Hong Kong U (26)

Singapore
National University of Singapore (30)

China
Peking U (50)
Tsinghua U (56)

South Korea
Seoul National U (50)

Why is Malaysia not in this “elite of elites” listing and when will Malaysia have a university which will have all-round excellence as to be included in this list?

(Speech at the Tawau DAP Thousand-People “Towards A New Era” dinner at Lau Gek Poh Memorial Hall, Tawau on Saturday, 15th November 2008 at 9 pm)

Comments

BigJoe,
Ah! But 10 years from now, we will still be better than University of Zimbabwe, university of Sudan AND university of Taliban!

max2811
UMNO doesn’t care if Malaysian unis aren’t ranked at all. They keep putting lesser-qualified students to be tutored by under-qualified lecturers. Don’t complain too much, Mr Lim. Or you will find yourself arrested for insulting the social contract and put under ISA (Internal Security Act).

monsterball
When you have a government putting out low class…yes man or woman chancellors to make UMNO look smart nd not choose the smartest to be chancellors, what do you expect?
Just look at those cro-ks dressed up with false titles with no shame at all, designed to fool the public and belittle Malaysians.
Such kind of mentalitiesm, such kind of hypocrites.. keep playing race and religion politics, everything and anything will be mismanaged by them.

aje
To tell you the truth, Malaysian universities will NEVER EVER overtake NUS or NTU in a long time to come. You know why? It is simple. Firstly their medium of instruction is in English. Secondly entry is solely based on MERIT not race or needs. For your info,for news I always watch Channelnews Asia or SBC 5 (Singapore channels). Good luck Malaysian univetrsities.

propheticsam
The rot starts right from primary and secondary schools.
Twenty years ago, half of the students I taught in lower secondary managed to score at least 50 marks for a pass. Nowadays you will be lucky if 25% can manage that. Yet so many of these underachievers get selected to our locals universities. Meritocracy? That’s a laugh.
To me the whole education system is rotten to the core. A complete overhaul from the bottom up is needed before we can hold our heads high again.
Even if we start now it will at least be a decade before we can undo the damage done.

ngahc
What is the point of sending our children to local university? Think carefully.

Loh
"Malaysia is losing out in the unrelenting battle for international competitiveness among nations, with Malaysian universities even losing out to universities in Thailand, Indonesia and Philippines – something completely unthinkable in the first three decades of our nationhood."– Kit
These countries did not have to be bothered to improve the standing of their universities they beat Malaysia flat. The reason is they do not have NEP (affirmative racial action) in their countries. Unless NEP is removed, there is no way the government can do the wrong thing and hope to achieve the right results.

oct
It doesn’t matter if our uni is not above the 200 THES list. We have lots of graduates. 60,000 unemployed graduates last year and more will be unemployed with the recession coming in. Soon, Bolehland (Malaysia) has the most unemployed graduates.
Our graduates have 25As in their SPM. Yet they can’t even construct a good English sentence. Some of our ministers can’t even speak good English. Oops they speak England.

2dinosaurs
when I read all these blogs, I admire the perseverance of you guys in Malaysia. Admire your optimism that Malaysia will actually change for the better.
If Malaysia is a stock I would have short sell it long time ago. It has nowhere to go but down.
Like a bad company, it has run out of ideas, short of discipline and hard work and faces a lot of external competition and a increasing difficult external environment.
The liabilities are increasing in numbers and the assets are migrating. Good luck to you guys who still believe in this stock.

lasersharp
This is interesting and I would like to share my observation. I am a Malaysian who is now work in Singapore. In the past year, I had the chance be in touch with the local Singaporeans uni students, attending recruitment days as part of my firm’s recruitment activities. I also had the chance to interview the uni students here for internship positions.
What did I observe? I am very impress indeed. The students here, many of them from China and India (who were given scholarships by the Spore government) impressed me a great deal.
The bunch of kids I interviewed are not only competent in their own respective fields, but showed excellent communications and other relevant skills. They are in touch with what is happening globally and can put up a good conversation on many matters.
I studied in one of the top UK universities and is awed by the system in Singapore, which has produced exceptional students.
We can argue the technicality and accuracy of the rankings etc, but generally they dont lie and my own observations confirmed that the Singapore unis are up there.
I was even more surprised that SIM (Singapore Institute of Management), a relatively new set up, has produced students with excellent marketable skills that fill a lot of the professional services jobs in Singapore.
I don't know what is wrong with the Malaysian system as I do not know it well, and I won't have answers either. But gut feels tell me Malaysia is not doing the right thing and it is unlikely to improve anytime soon whilst our neighbour continues to strive forward.
What can you do? We'll send your kids here, the fees are relatively affordable..

bystander
You and I know that our univs and education have been going down the drain for ages except that UMNO because of politics has deny this fact.
The main culprit for this freefall is none other than TDM. At the end of the day the nation - not Chinese, not Malay, not Indian - is the biggest loser ie bangsa Malaysia (the Malaysian race). A locally qualified bumi architect I met the other day cannot even string together a complete simple English sentence without grammar and spelling mistakes. That’s how poor the state of our english is today. Its not manglish. its pathetic English

waterfrontcoolie
At the moment, I believe the civil structure [ including that of educational institution] is okay compared with other Asean members [except Singapore which we better leave aside, because they aren't bothered to compete in the Asian scenario!]
We all know there was and still is a mad scramble of PhD in every sector of our society. With even a purchased Phd, after a while you are recognised by the Bolehland (Malaysia). Remember the former Mayor of Kuala Lumpur, happily geeting people to address him as Dr. and soon enough, it was found that his thesis was not accepted and he was not entitled to have his Dr.
I was informed that this came about when two civil servants were sent to the same Uni in the US to do their PhDs. The senior bloke failed whereas his junior got through. Unfortunately they were psoted to the same section with the PhD reporting to the failed bloke! Never mind that, the Boss begun to show who was the Boss!
After an incident or two, the real PhD let go to the whole department that the Boss who proudly called himself Dr. actually did not get through! Hence the subsequent commotion of show us your scroll!! This of course also tell us how efficient INTAN was ans still is!!
In a nutshell, you find the political masters spinning indoctrination to bluff the society and in the process the civil service tacks along to achieve the same self-preservation motive; and of course this is [ast down the line to every fabric of our nation.
We begun to lose our sense of morality on what is fundamentally right or wrong. Of course our situation is not helped by this changing perception of life in this modern environment.
This brought me to a conversation I had with an ex-Malay colleague over a cuppa. In the group, there was this issue of unwanton spendings by the Government on issues highlighted here. The discussion obviously indicated that only a section of the society actually gained from such actions.
He popped in to say that even the Chinese community gained through the IPP privatization efforts; by indicating that one of the chinese owned IPP was given such a lucrative term!
He was flabbergasted when he was told only Malays thought in that manner; Chinese community didnot give a damn to this apparently Chinese-controlled company! The issue is why should the public made to pay for this arrangement by a bunch of crooks!
From this incident, one will realise that the society has a long way to go. Certainly we will not get much result through just this blog-site. The issue is much larger than we all let to believe. Unless we can find a more subtle mean to put across this message that the competition is just not among us in Malaysia but an issue betwen Malaysia and other nations, we are on our way to ZIMBABWE very soon.

taiking
Look, our UMNO government is not bothered by the whole thing - not one little bit. Not even if (this day will certainly come) our universities are ranked amongst vocational institutes of the world.

melurian
Can’t compare with THES, Malaysian universities are good in the eyes of Malaysian rakyat (people) and their graduates are serving well to the society (sic), we should not compare apple and orange with durian where the Caucasians deem “filthy”.
How many disagree UM students are good? How many agree UMm medical graduates are lousy? Do you dare to challenge UM alumi are garbage?
i think this article is very biased.

melurian
It’s the student rather the institution that makes the quality, and when you come out for workforce, studying in local univ makes practical working in Malaysia than those aussie and anglais (Australia and England) who likes to nag our company/technology have no standard thus cannot work well.
And to people who are glad Thai/Filipino/Indon univ surpassed UM/USM/UKM (Malaysian universities), they should have their citizenship striped off because they only pouring fuel to fire instead working together to improve Malaysian public univ, you know how German lost ww1 in nov 11, 1918?

i_love_malaysia
When the Minister of Education is still undecisive after so long over what is the language to use to teach Maths and Science subjects, what do you expect the standard of our universities would be ranked?

i_love_malaysia
Our local universities dont depend on THES or QS, we have our very own ways of assessing our own standards!
Criteria 1, the racial composition and quota must be achieved by all means - 50%
Criteria 2, the racial composition and quota of the academics and administrative staff must achieve the national policies by all means - 50%
Criteria 3, the racial composition and quota of the graduates who get 1st Class, 2nd Class Upper etc. must achieve the national policies by all means -50%
Criteria 4, the results of the examinations dont guarantee the academic performance of the graduate, as other factors will be taken into considerations e.g. interviews, race, political party involved in, religion, type of food eaten, cloths worn, language spoken and other terms and conditions which the university or the MOE may decide from time to time etc. - 50%
The total is 200%, as long as the score is above 100% and above, a 5 star rating will be given i.e. Par Excellence!!!

http://blog.limkitsiang.com/2008/11/16/malaysian-universities-losing-out-to-thailand-indonesia-and-philippines/