Malaysian universities not in the Times list of World’s top 400 universities

• Second time in a row for Malaysia to not make it into the Times List of the World’s top 400 universities
• Two Singaporean institutions made it in the top 100
• Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM) ranked 98th in Top 100 Universities under 50 category

Not a single university in Malaysia appeared in the Times Higher Education World University Rankings this year. Except for Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM) which managed to place 98th in the Top 100 Universities under 50 category.

Two Singapore institutions are among the top 100. The National University of Singapore (NUS) ranked 29th and Nanyang Technological University at 86th.
The top ten are seven US-based and three UK-based universities, with the California Institute of Technology stealing the show at 95.5 points. NUS got 77.5 points whereas Nanyang 59.4 points.
Thailand’s King Mongkut’s University of Technology is the only other Southeast Asian University in the list, at 351st place. According to Times Higher Education website, the universities were judged according to 13 performance indicators from five areas – teaching, research, knowledge transfer and international outlook. Moreover, universities were judged according to disciplinary mix, citation counts and research.
In response to this, Minister of Higher Education Khaled Nording said that the absence of the country’s universities in the Times rankings was due to their recent venture into research. “Times used an evaluation of over ten years. Our focus on research in university only started in 2007. So, most of our universities didn’t participate,” he explained.
Khaled then spoke about local universities’ participation in the QS World University Rankings 2012/2013, which uses five-year data. Universiti Malaya and Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia came in at 156th and 261st place in the QS list.
Meanwhile, party supremo Lim Kit Siang accused the government of lacking the political will to improve the country’s education system.
“A lof ot talk of revamping and overhauling the system hasn’t come to anything concrete,” he said. He said that Malaysia’s universities were once highly recognised as esteemed institutions of public learning. Those days, he added, were long gone.
The full list can be found HERE