Malaysian universities completely left out in the new Newsweek Top 100 Global Universities ranking – stuck in the world’s third, fourth and even fifth  divisions

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Media Statement
by Lim Kit Siang  
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 (Parliament, Thursday) Malaysian universities have been completely left out in the new Newsweek Top 100 Global Universities ranking, stuck in the world’s third, fourth and even fifth divisions – three years after the Prime Minister, Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi’s call for world-class universities and “towering Malaysians”.

With Harvard, Stanford, Yale, California Institute of Technology, University of California in Berkeley, Cambridge, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Oxford, University of California at San Francisco and Columbia occupying the top 10 slots, only ten  Asian universities made it into the list, five from Japan, three from Hong Kong and two from Singapore, viz:

Tokyo University        -           16

Kyoto University        -           29

NUS (Singapore)      -           36

Osaka University       -           57

Hong Kong Univ of

 Science and Technology     -  60

Tohoku University        -         68

University of Hong Kong -   69

Nanyang Tech. Univ

Singapore            -           71

Nagoya University     -           94

Chinese U of Hong Kong – 96

There are weaknesses in the Newsweek ranking, with the omission of any university  from China,  India and South Korea, but this can be no consolation for Malaysia.

Until the seventies, the University of Malaya enjoyed not only international repute but was generally regarded as equal if not superior even to the best of the Australian universities.

Eight Australian universities made it into  the Newsweek Top 100 Global Universities list, while Malaysia’s premier university, University of Malaya, has dropped completely out of sight. 

This is the most powerful evidence of how lowly Malaysia has fallen in university quality and academic excellence, with the consequent serious loss in our international competitiveness in a world rapidly shifting from an economy based on labour and industry to one driven by knowledge and innovation.

The eight  Australian universities in the Newsweek Top 100 Global Universities list are:

Australian National University          -           38

University of Sydney                        -           50

University of Melbourne                   -           53

University of New South Wales        -           64

Monash University                            -           73

University of Western Australia         -           78

University of Queensland                  -           91

University of Newcastle                    -           97

It is clear despite some changes in the higher education system, like the appointment of two women Vice Chancellors, we have still a very long way to go to get into the “first division” for top global  universities  and that the government has still to demonstrate that it has the political will restore Malaysia’s academic excellence and university quality in the sixties as to have at least two universities ranked in the world’s top 100 universities, whether the  rankings be that Shanghai Jiaotong University, the Times Higher Education Supplement Survey or Newsweek Top 100  Global Universities.

(17/08/2006)