KUALA LUMPUR: The significant improvement shown by most of the local universities in the Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) Asia University Rankings (QS-AUR) 2020 compared to last year, gives a boost and huge impact to the national education system.
National Knowledge chairman, Zambri Mohd Isa said this was a sign of positive development and would indirectly attract the interest of overseas students to pursue higher education in the local universities.
Thus, he added, the international ranking of local universities played a vital role as it could enhance the quality of higher education in Malaysia.
“To me, this ranking should match with quality because it has its own way of assessing the learning system, how research is done, number of lecturers and many other things,” he said.
Yesterday, Education Minister Dr Maszlee Malik announced that Universiti Malaya (UM) had successfully climbed to 13th spot in the QS-AUR 2020 from 24th last year.
Two other universities also recorded significant improvement, namely Universiti Teknologi Mara (UiTM) which was ranked 119th from 158th in 2018 while Universiti Malaysia Pahang (UMP) rose to 134th spot from 290th.
Zambri also stressed that the Education Ministry should continue with programmes to further enhance Malaysian universities’ ranking in the future.
Sharing similar sentiment, Malaysian Youth Council president, Jufitri Joha said the university ranking at the international level was important to reflect the quality of education offered in Malaysia.
“In addition, the university rankings can promote the nation as an education hub to attract foreign students seeking higher education and at the same time learn our values,” he added.
Jufitri, however, reminded the universities not to become obsessed with the ranking of their institutions because it could put pressure on the lecturers to produce research papers that might lead to plagiarism to raise the university’s position. — Bernama
