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Nothing surprising there.

Both Singapore's Universities are there, none of Malaysia's made it in.

Just a reflection of the different agendas of the respective Universities. Those in the list strive for excellence.

Malaysia strive for the lowest common denominator. Other words, mediocrity.

Sad, that both UM and University of Singapore came from the same mould, but took different paths.

On a personal level, an Imperial College London graduate like myself will dismiss any ranking that fails to rank Imperial College as number 1 in the world. We are, indeed, the best engineering school in the world. Forget MIT, Stanford, or worst of all, Oxford.

At national level, we can all forget about creating a world-class university in Malaysia. As long as we focus too much on 'socio-economic' factor that justifies 'positive' discrimination among different races, we'll never get there.

I am suprised that Indian Institute of Technology is not listed. Their graduates are selected by US companies months before they graduate.

Eventhough I teach for an American university and also teach adjunct at a top 5 university according to this list, I think the list is biased. If you notice, there are too many American universities in the list.

USM rocks!

Today's Sun carries an interview of the new VC of UM.

Reading thru', one gets the key message of the state of that university: they're still trying to figure out how to get organized to tackle their SWOT situation in tandem with being a higher education spearhead for this country.

One would think that after so many years of existence, it would be a cinch to walk over 'vision, mission, etc' and do what needs to be done. But then again, politicisation has created too many barriers and ingrained mindsets that result in something close to moribund, if you want to compare witht that stellar list of institutions.

That's why one isn't surprised anymore when Rafiah hinted that retraining on how to do research will be provided to her academia - what gives, to teach faculty what they're supposed to teach their students, so that the former can then be promoted based on publish-or-perish? That speaks volume of the slide, doesn't it? How did UM, the nation's premier, come to this, when her faculty don't even webify their CVs - is it because they have 'nothing to hide' because there's 'very little to show'? And why should that be so, if a university should be the one place you must expect some level of integrity in its processes towards excellence, since by those processes future leaders will be trained to spearhead proper benchmarking for every position and task they will themselves handle later on after they graduate?

And while at it, she should add that they won't just webify the CVs of her staff, but also put out the other two ends of the supply chain - one, the admissions list with full names, scores and selection criteria, and two, the passing marks for all the subjects examined of the students in the university.

Let the uproar begin - so that real improvements, not cosmetics, will be pushed forward.

Nationalism without true meritocracy is the road to decline.

So none of our universities are in the top 100. So what? We are not in the business of impressing foreigners. We are happy doing it our way.

Say what? Oh, the foreign direct investments are falling? We are not competitive?

Oh, we have lots of local grads who are unemployable? So what? We have oil. We'll just pump more to feed them.

THe sad fact is that a person with foreign uni qualifications will not have a problem finding a job. Not so for the local grads -- in my words, they just plain suck. But that's may just be empirical evidence. Any one care to disagree?

Yumcious,

I don't entirely agree. University provides basic education. A lot of it has got to do with attitude, desire to change & suceed. I have someone working for me who's graduated from UM and he's excellent with positive attitude much better than oxbridge graduate that I had before. Incidentally, my regional boss who's a Rhode Scholar mentioned during the company offsite meeting that some of his worst recruit are actually from the ivy league, they present themselves super well with superb communication skill, vast networking and etc but when it comes to work they never quite deliver.

Agree with JigsawPuzle, list is suspect and too american bias, how about European university? University in Germany and France , Spain & italy are hardly in the list. So is the UK. Don't tell me that they've been producing crap graduates, when these countries produced some of the most dynamic multinationals.

Folks

Malaysian universities can be world class universities, if we allow our VCs and Minister of Higher Education to re-define the word, "World".

In Malaysia, "World" to UMNO bureaucrats refer to three places, Peninsular Malaysia, Sabah and Sarawak. After all, why compare ourselves with the rest of the world. Our medium of instruction in Universities is the local language, Bahasa. Simply NO comparison. We should compare ourselves with Indonesia. University of Malaya and UKM will be in the top 3 at least. Our higher education policy is not to serve international job market, it is to make sure our UMNO supporters get a job in our own country.

So what's the fuss, folks? The boys in UMNO Youth are too happy to stay status quo, recruit no-brainers as our lecturers and hopelessly incompetent and political tripods as Vice Chancellors and where education policies are decided by half-baked Ministers of Higher Education.

Malaysia should focus its resources on first world infrastructure (we do best here). After all, we have survived for more than 35 years with Third World mentality without much disasters. Thanks to UMNO and UMNO Youth's great visions for Malaysia.

Don't trust these rankings! They are biased towards the developed countries.

'We' will come out with a more fair ranking. Malaysian universities should be among the best...

zagato

You said....I have someone working for me who's graduated from UM and he's excellent with positive attitude much better than oxbridge graduate that I had before. Incidentally, my regional boss who's a Rhode Scholar mentioned during the company offsite meeting that some of his worst recruit are actually from the ivy league.

One should not reflect on the individual skills and competence of a graduate with the University. That would be an unfair call. Just because one individual from an Ivy League school is a ass at work, should not reflect the university he/she came from. That is parochial thinking of your regional boss and you.

The issue is what the Institution can offer for its graduates !! THe universities are supposed to craft out uncut diamonds into marketable products. But if the Govt policy is to allow gravel and sandstones to be polised as diamonds, it is an impossible task. You get half-baked products as graduates who are useful for UMNO Youth leadership purposes.Oh, you do get once in a while an Oxford or Dublin university graduate who manage to slide into the UMNO Youth leadership.

Similarly if you have incompetent and utterly dumbed craftmen as lecturers in Universiities, you spoil an expensive uncut diamond (students with straight A's". In which case, You end up with rubbish being produced as graduates, who are suitable only to work as bureaucrats in the Ministry of Higher Education or allowed to be recycled back into our local universiities as VCs and professors

I recall the MB of Selangor used to say this on 'Bersama Menteri' aired by RTM1 a few months before the state unilaterally declared as 'developed state' - "Kita akan menggunakan kaedah dan kriteria kita sendiri untuk mengukur samada kita boleh dianggap sebagai negeri maju. Kita tidak perlu menggunakan pendekatan yang digunakan oleh negara barat kerana kriteria mereka adalah biased dan tidak mengambilkira prasarana negara kita." - or something to that effect.

I suppose in this Bolehland, the Education Ministry can come up with its own criteria and measurement, and construct its own international ranking. Surely all Malaysian public universities will become the top 20 universities in the world based on this fair-for-all ranking. And yes, we can add a couple of other universities, like the University of Phoenix, University of Bhutan, University of Dar-Es-Salaam into that ranking too.

I have to disagree with Yumscious and agreed with Zagato in terms of local grads. Although foreign Uni (like US and UK) would definitely provide much exposure and research compared to our local Uni, but it is also up to the individual itself for the initiative in seeking knowledge. I graduated from UKM in 1999 and I'm having a good job. A few of my course mates easily get jobs and are now working in US. How about that?! It all depends on the individual!

Folks

Here is my ranking for Top 10 "World" class universities

1. University of Malaysia, Malaysia

2. Gajah Mada University, Indonesia

3. Universiti Kebangsaan, Malaysia

4. University of Technology Malaysia (UTM)

5. Universitas Indonesia, Jakarta

6. Bina Nusantara University,Indonesia

7. Universiti Sains, Malaysia

8. Diponegoro University, Semarang, Central Java

9. University Putra, Malaysia

10. Harvard University (reason: medium of instruction not appropriate for knowledge acquisition in SE Asia)

YESSSSSSSSSSSS…... Found some Malaysian universities among the Top 3000 by searching backwards from No. 3000th (hint: look for the Malaysia flag):
http://www.webometrics.info/top3000.asp.htm

University of Malaya—1995
International Islamic University of Malaysia—2152
Singapore Polytechnic—2190
University Utara Malaysia—2577

Funny, a polytechnic (which is not a university – unlike some polys in the UK which operate as universities) beating UUM.

Anyway, this calls for national celebration – UM making it into the Top 2000 of the world’s universities. Merdeka Day is just round the corner. We should put up buntings and banners in the university and around KL proclaiming this no mean feat.

Malaysia Boleh!

Dear all who loves to say bad things about Malaysia. See below again on how the ranking was done. It is not about meritocracy, positive discriminations, politics, etc. It is all about money and fundings. Money to pay for the best and fundings for research.

I believe we must stop being cynical about ourselves and finally conclude that everything is about economics. The rest are just smoke that clouds our thinking.

The ranking scoring....
Fifty percent of the score came from equal parts of three measures used by Shanghai Jiatong: the number of highly-cited researchers in various academic fields, the number of articles published in Nature and Science, and the number of articles listed in the ISI Social Sciences and Arts & Humanities indices. Another 40 percent of the score came from equal parts of four measures used by the Times: the percentage of international faculty, the percentage of international students, citations per faculty member (using ISI data), and the ratio of faculty to students. The final 10 percent came from library holdings (number of volumes).

profx,

the rankings do not reflect on the individual but on the university. The issue now is the credibility of the unversity and not the individual.

Even, if you and some of your mates land good jobs, are you saying that we should ignore the rankings altogether?

Fine, perhaps there may be bias in the Newsweek method, but I can't even remember when was the last time any of our local unis made it in any list be it conducted in the West or in Asia.

Instead of making excuses ie, that the survey was biased, why can't we just acknowledge that improvements need to be made and get on with it?

We shouldn't be smug by saying that we should be assessed based on our own standards. That comes across as rather "syiok sendiri", don't you think?

Besides, UM is ranked 1995! How biased can that be? We're way off to factor in any biasness.

limeuu: "Sad, that both UM and University of Singapore came from the same mould, but took different paths."

_________

Funnily enough, you could say the same thing about Malaysia - came from same mould as Singapore but took different path.

Darth Dave: "the rankings do not reflect on the individual but on the university. The issue now is the credibility of the unversity and not the individual."

_________

Agreed. These particular rankings are heavily weighted on how prolific is a university in terms of publishing scientific papers thus implying they are good research universities. These ranking are not meant to reflect on the quality of graduates but more on the quality of the faculty and the research they do.

General rankings like these also cannot be taken as indicative of excellence in specific disciplines. For example, can Harvard or Stanford, ranked #1 and #2 respectively in the Newsweek Top 10 beat University of California San Diego, ranked #23 in terms of biotech research? I doubt so. Nevertheless, for across the board excellence, these two universities beat UCSD hands down.

For students looking to choose a university, these rankings are not very helpful. For those interested in computer science for example, Illinois Urbana Champagne ranked #45 would suit the student much better than #1 Harvard or #3 Yale. Also do not forget that small gems like Wesleyan or Harvey Mudd could give students who do better in intimate settings a far better educational experience than a large impersonal university like Stanford or MIT.

and we really think that the people from china are flocking to msia to actually study.

good one, groo

groo

The good folks from China come to Malaysia to study English... no.. to study how Malaysians speak English.

Not to worry, in 20 years time, Malaysians will be flocking to China to study Mandarin, including our equally good folks from UMNO Youth. I can't wait to reach the age when I hear our UMNO Youth leaders speaking mandarin to MCA Youth leaders.

Hey no worry man,at least we are still ahead of University of Ghana.

teh-o,

Much better still - Malaysian universities are way ahead of University of Applied Science Erfurt, which is ranked in 3000th place. Wow, we beat a German University - Malaysia boleh!

Er, what the furt is Erfurt?