Malaysian University Ranking made us proud!

We should be proud that for the second consecutive year, Malaysia had fallen completely out of the list of the world's Top 200 Universities this year in the 2008 Times Higher Education Supplement (THES) - Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) World University Rankings. Bravo, congrats for screwing up!

There is not a single university in the 2008 THES-QS Top 200 Universities list, there is also not a single university in the separate ranking of Top 100 Universities for five subject areas – Natural Sciences, Social Sciences, Arts and Humanities; Life Sciences and Biomedicine; and Technology. Malaysia BOleh!

Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM) and Universiti Malaya (UM) were in the 2006 Ranking, placed No. 185 and 192 respectively. UKM plunged to 309 last year and improved to 250 this year while UM fell to 246 last year improving slightly to 230 this year – but both remain outside the Top 200 Universities ranking.

The government named Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM) as the Apex University but it has a dismal international rankings after being included once in the Top 200 Universities list – No. 111 in 2004, No. 326 in 2005, 277 in 2006, No. 307 in 2007 and No. 313 in 2008.

It is both sad and pathetic that our Apex University, the USM, at No. 313 ranking, is not only left far behind in South East Asia by Singapore (National University of Singapore No. 30 and Nanyang Technological University No. 77) but also by Thailand (Chulalongkorn University No. 166), Indonesia (University of Indonesia No. 287) and the Philippines (Ateneo de Manila University No. 254 and University of the Philippines No. 276).

Heh...heh kita kalah dengan Thailand, Indonesia dan Filipina. Why are we even suprised with the results, remember sometime ago our Higher Education Minister defended that the criteria used by THES is different and that is the reason why our universities did not qualify! What a joke, as i reckon either he did not attend any local university nor interested to check the quality of lecturers that they hire.

If our universities are top notch universities why is that the sons & daughters’ of our minister are studying overseas? If they strongly think that ours are on par with rest of the world shouldn't they send their children to local university namely UiTM!

Just look at the appointment of VC's isn't it based on race, needless to say about the lecturers. It doesn't take a scientist to figure out, its just that they do not want to face reality. I had the privilege of being taught by foreign lecturers at a local university and what a different league they were compared to the some local Malay lecturers. There were some good Malay lecturers whom I regard highly but for the rest of them they are there because of their race and not for their intelligence. One of them then was a recent PHD holder from UK taught us Marketing paper and on the very first day he said" I could not speak good English so I will teach in Malay" and guess what we had many foreign students in the class. I heard he is the head of the Management Faculty now and I can just wish the students and the university all the best. Now tell me why are we surprised that we are tumbling down in world ranking. Needless to worry the minister will make another intelligent statement soon to justify why! As I said before, only in Boleh Land!