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First of all: a reality check. We are in a new globalized era in which everyone – whether an individual, a business, an organization or the nation state - has to compete against everyone else, with competitors coming not only from the neighbourhood but from the rest of the world. Even a simple informal sector business such as a char kway teow stall is competing against other businesses ranging from other noodle stalls to the fried chicken or burgers served by global franchises such as McDonalds.
Today, no person, organization or country can avoid being compared with others in the quality of their product, service, productivity, innovativeness or some other variable. Comparison on quality, pricing, satisfaction and other key consumer concerns is done on a constant basis by all consumers - whether the consumer is looking for lunch, buying a service or seeking to invest his money.
Technological advances and the widespread proliferation of ranking surveys also mean that large organizations are constantly evaluated in terms of the quality of the work or the product or service provided. Together with it, comparisons are also made with other organizations offering similar products or services.
Ten or even five years ago, many organizations could exist in their cocoons or comfort zones of incompetence or inefficiency because there was little way of knowing how their products or services compared with those being offered by similar organizations. Today this lack of comparative information has disappeared.
Information is everywhere and often instantaneously available. The acceleration in migration to the new generation of information technologies has reinforced and proliferated new buying habits and behaviors as consumers exercise more control over where, when, what and how they buy
Scams, shoddy work, over pricing, outrageous claims – these can be gotten away for some time but eventually, sooner rather than later, the truth emerges. There is no place to hide in the global market place.
Even universities and the civil service so long hidden from public scrutiny are no longer immune from being analyzed, evaluated and compared. Two recent reports show how unimpressed foreign experts engaged in international ranking work are with Malaysia’s current institutional reform drive to excel. In the first part of this two part article, we shall deal with the international ranking of our public universities that have received tens of billions of ringgit of public funds and see how they compare with universities of other countries in the region.
THE- QS Ranking of World Universities
The QS World University Rankings is an annual publication that ranks the "Top 200 World Universities", and is published by Times Higher Education (THE) and Quacquarelli Symonds (QS). The full listings feature on the QS website and on the THE website. These rankings have been available since 2004 and are broken down by subject and region.
As with ranking systems, the QS rankings have attracted both criticism as well as praise. Some critics have argued that the QS methodology is too subjective, places too much emphasis on peer review and is opaque in the way it constructs its sample for its reputational ranking. In its place, the Academic Ranking of World Universities by Shanghai Jiao Tong University has been put forward as a more superior ranking system, although it is generally perceived as being biased towards achievement in the natural sciences.
Despite the inevitable criticism, the THE-QS rankings have generally been well received world-wide and are widely followed. Amongst universities in the UK and the Asia-Pacific region that have commented on the rankings, the Vice-Chancellor of Massey University has commented that the THE-QS ranking is a “wonderful external acknowledgement of several University attributes, including the quality of its research, research training, teaching and employability.“ She is also on record to say that she sees the rankings as a true measure of a university’s ability to fly high internationally.
Asian Universities Ranking in the QS System
So how have the public universities of Malaysia fared in our international ranking given all the talk about building a culture of excellence and merit and our ambitions to become a global hub of higher education? In the 2008 global university ranking, no Malaysian university appears in the first 100 top universities, although three Hong Kong and two Singapore universities are ranked (University of Hong Kong at no. 26, National University of Singapore at no. 30, HK University of Science and Technology at no. 39, Chinese University at no. 42 and the Nanyang Technological University at no. 77).
More recently, there has been the announcement of the 2009 Asian rankings for which the QS methodology for assessment is provided in detail. According to the press statement, 4 main criteria have been used to determine the ranking, namely
1. Research quality (60%)
2. Teaching quality (20%)
3. Graduate employability (10%)
4. Internationalization (10%)
Each main criterion is in turn broken down into several areas with weights given for each as shown in the chart below.
Table 1: Criteria Used for ranking Asian Universities and their Weights
| Criteria | QS.com Asian University Rankings In association with Chosun Ilbo | |
| Indicator | Weight | |
| Research Quality | Asian Academic Peer Review (academics with knowledge of research in Asian institutions) | 30% |
| Papers per Faculty | 15% | |
| Citations per Paper | 15% | |
| Teaching Quality | Student Faculty Ratio | 20% |
| Graduate Employability | Asian Employer Review (employers with experience of recruiting from Asian institutions) | 10% |
| Internationalisation | International Faculty | 2.5% |
| International Students | 2.5% | |
| Inbound Exchange Students | 2.5% | |
| Outbound Exchange Students | 2.5% | |
Unfortunately, even if we only use the regional, and not the global setting as our basis of comparison, Malaysian universities also do not come out well. This is clear from the chart showing the top 30 Asian universities below.
Table 2: The Top 30 Asian Universities 2009
| 2009 rank | School Name | Country |
| 1 | University of HONG KONG | Hong Kong |
| 2 | The CHINESE University of Hong Kong | Hong Kong |
| 3 | University of TOKYO | Japan |
| 4 | HONG KONG University of Science and Technology | Hong Kong |
| 5 | KYOTO University | Japan |
| 6 | OSAKA University | Japan |
| 7 | Korea Advanced Institute of Science & Technology | South Korea |
| 8 | SEOUL National University | South Korea |
| 9 | TOKYO Institute of Technology | Japan |
| 10 | National University of Singapore (NUS) | Singapore |
| 10 | PEKING University | Japan |
| 12 | NAGOYA University | Japan |
| 13 | TOHOKU University | Japan |
| 14 | Nanyang Technological University (NTU) | Singapore |
| 15 | KYUSHU University | Japan |
| 15 | TSINGHUA University | China |
| 17 | Pohang University of Science and Technology | South Korea |
| 18 | CITY University of Hong Kong | Hong Kong |
| 19 | University of TSUKUBA | Japan |
| 20 | HOKKAIDO University | Japan |
| 20 | KEIO University | Japan |
| 22 | National TAIWAN University | Taiwan |
| 23 | KOBE University | Japan |
| 24 | University of Science and Technology of China | China |
| 25 | YONSEI University | South Korea |
| 26 | FUDAN University | China |
| 27 | NANJING University | China |
| 28 | HIROSHIMA University | Japan |
| 29 | SHANGHAI JIAO TONG University | China |
| 30 | Indian Institute of Technology Bombay | India |
| 30 | MAHIDOL University | Thailand |
So if Malaysian universities have failed to crack the top rankings of Asian universities, where do they actually stand? University of Malaya appears at No. 39; Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia at No. 51; Universiti Sains Malaysia at No. 69; Universiti Teknologi Mara (UTM) at No. 82; Universiti Putra Malaysia at No. 90 and Multimedia University appears at no. 171
Clearly, there’s nothing to be proud of in terms of how the academic world assesses our public universities. In fact, we should be concerned that our rankings continue to lag behind even when compared with universities only from this region.
What are the main factors determining the poor performance of our universities and what can be done about it? From my own experience as a former Professor in the University of Malaya and also drawing on the analyses of other professionals, scholars and academics who have studied the topic, the main reason standing in the way of improving our public universities is the government’s insistence on persisting with the NEP racially biased approach to running the universities in all its key aspects: leadership, staffing, promotion, student enrolment, etc. In fact, this race-oriented approach should have ended in 1990.
In the next part, we will examine how the NEP’s race-oriented policies have contributed to the low standards of our public universities. We will also discuss what can be done to reform the universities so they can be more competitive in the global education market place.
Note
This article initially appeared as an article in Chinese in the Red Tomato, 25 September 2009
Related links
Malaysian Universities and the NEP - Article by Dr Lim Teck Ghee
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