Universities - How our Mighty has fallen!

Opposition leader Lim Kit Siang reminded us that in the 1950’s and 60’s, Malaya/Malaysia’s best HSC students opted for Universiti Malaya (UM) rather than universities in Australia. Then, only the University of Sydney and University of Melbourne were considered to be on par with UM.

Oh UM, how thou, once amongst the mighty, has fallen!

Lim said the standards and quality of Malaysian universities continue to decline while 16 lower division universities in Australia have achieved international acclaim by getting listed in the Shanghai Jiao Tong 500 World Universities Ranking 2006 for the fourth year running.

The Institute of Higher Education of Shanghai Jiao Tong University, which conducts the annual survey, ranks universities by several indicators, including alumni and staff winning Nobel Prizes and Fields Medals, highly cited researchers, nature and science articles published, articles indexed in major citation indices and the per capita academic performance of the institution.

Harvard and Cambridge take the top two spot this year.

The 92 universities from the Asia-Pacific region included in the list are from Japan (32 universities), Australia (16), China (9), South Korea (9), Israel (7)*, New Zealand (5), Taiwan (5), Hong Kong (5), India (2) and Singapore (2).

* I wonder how Israel is grouped under the Asia-Pacific region?

The top 10 universities from Asia-Pacific which made it to the list are Tokyo University (No: 19), Kyoto University (22), Australian National University (54), Hebrew University Jerusalem (60), Osaka University (61), Tohoku University (76), University Melbourne (78), Tokyo Institute of Technology (89), Nagoya University (98) and Hokkaido University (102).

500 universities ranked, but not one from Malaysia!

Lim warned that as long as meritocracy and academic excellence are not restored to the ‘highest pedestal in Malaysian academia’, local universities will never be able to compete with the best in the world.

If I were to make a listing called the KTemoc 500 World Half-Past-Six Universities Ranking 2006, I bet we would be placed at least in the top three.

Related:
Zen & the Half-Past-Six University