Each country has own university standards, says mininster

By Rohani Maswari, The Malay Mail

PETALING JAYA: Each country has its own university standards, says Higher Education Minister Datuk Seri Mohamed Khaled Nordin when commenting on University Malaya (UM) slipping to 207th spot in the 2010 QS World University Rankings, a drop of 27 places from the previous year when it was ranked at 180.

“It’s not fair to compare local universities with universities from other countries as each country has its own standards and requirements that their own universities have to fulfil,” he said when contacted by The Malay Mail yesterday.

He said the rankings were just based on perception and there was no data to clarify the rankings and this made the whole exercise subjective.

“My ministry has its own strategic plan based on the nation’s development needs, and as far we are concerned, UM has shown many improvements in that area,” said Mohamed Khalid.

Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM) also dropped from its 320th placing last year to 360th now.

However, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM), Universiti Putra Malaysia (UPM) and Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM) showed improvements from their rankings last year.

UKM is now ranked at number 263 compared with 291 in 2009, while UPM and USM are now at numbers 319 (previously 345) and 309 (previously 314) respectively.

The QS World University Rankings are a league table of the world’s top universities embracing aspects of research quality, teaching quality, graduate employability and internationalisation to give students a better perspective of the shortlisted universities in which they may be interested to enroll.

The overall rankings are based on six indicators: academic peer review, employer review, faculty student ratio, citations per faculty, and proportions of international students and international faculties.