Our universities drop off the radar
by Chua Sue-Ann, malaysiakini, Nov 9.
It isn’t hard to see why DAP leader Lim Kit Siang calls it a ‘national shame’ - for the first time, Malaysian public universities are not ranked among the world’s top 200 tertiary institutions.
The Times Higher Education Supplement (THES) World University Rankings released yesterday, the fourth to date, is based on a survey conducted by Quacquarelli Symonds Ltd (QS).
The highest-ranked Malaysian university this year is Universiti Malaya (UM) at 246, followed by Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM) at 307, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM) at 309 and Universiti Putra Malaysia (UPM) at 364.
Last year, two universities - UKM (185) and UM (192) - had made it to the list.
Lim, in a statement, pointed out that two Singapore universities managed to remain in the top 100 list - National University of Singapore was ranked 33 (falling 14 places) and Nanyang Techological University was at 69 (from 61 previously).
In referring to the Malaysian non-performance as “a national shame”, he urged leaders to “end their complacency and delusion that Malaysia is becoming more competitive globally”.
The rankings reveal an increase, albeit marginal, in the number of Asian universities in the Top 100 - from12 in 2006 to13 this year.
At the forefront of Asian universities are the University of Tokyo and the University of Hong Kong at 17th and 18th place respectively. Others in the top 50 include Kyoto University, the Chinese University of Hong Kong, Tsinghua University and Osaka University.
US and United Kingdom varsities lead the pack with Harvard University retaining top position, followed by Cambridge, Oxford and Yale University in joint second place.
THES is yet to reveal the breakdown of scores achieved by each institution or the rest of the list. Such details are typically released a few weeks later.
Enhanced methodology
THES-QS editor Martin Ince said in a statement that the survey for the 2007 rankings was “the most rigorous and complete so far”.
The results have been enhanced by increased response rates and the introduction of new survey methodologies, said QS head researcher Ben Sowter said in a statement.
The survey is based on marks for six criteria: independent academic peer review (40 percent), research citations (20 percent), staff-student ratio (20 percent), employer opinion (10 percent), international student ratio (5 percent) and international staff ratio (5 percent).
A total of 5,101 academics responded to the 2007 Academic Peer Review Survey while 1,482 companies worldwide responded to the 2007 Graduate Employer Survey.
The academic peer review, which carries the most weight in terms of the score, is now strictly independent to ensure that academics cannot fill responses about their own universities.
Previously, Malaysian academics had blamed the decline in rankings on the research citation criteria, which does not take research published in Bahasa Malaysia into account.
Speaking at a seminar in UM in 2005, QS managing director Nunzio Quacquarelli had conceded several limitations of the survey, including the neglect of academic papers published in languages other than English.
This problem has since been addressed by using Scorpus, instead of Thompson ISI, as the scholarly database used in research. Scorpus is touted to be a more comprehensive database with better coverage of academic institutions and languages.
Last week, the National Accreditation Board had delivered a similarly dismal appraisal of Malaysian public universities.
According to the university perception survey, the first of its kind ever conducted in the country, none of the local public universities are outstanding.
Only USM obtained a five-star rating, being placed in the second-rank category of ‘Excellent’. UM, UKM, UPM, Universiti Islam Antarabangsa, Universiti Teknologi Mara, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia were categorised as ‘Good’.
