7 Malaysian unis in the top 300 institutions in developing countries

Malaysian universities continue to improve and make new heights in global rankings and among developing countries.

Malaysian universities, in spite of the rain of criticism, still made the top 100 universities among emerging economies in developing countries. According to Times Higher Education (THE) 2017 ranking of universities in more than 50 countries including Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa (BRICS), three Malaysian universities made the top 100 pick.

University Putra Malaysia (UPM), one Malaysia’s top universities and among the top 300 universities worldwide, is ranked in 89^th. Universiti Teknologi Petronas (UTP) is ranked 91 and Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM) is ranked 100.

On the other hand, Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM), Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM),  and Universiti Utara Malaysia are ranked 114, 136, and 201 – 250 band respectively. Universiti Teknologi MARA is listed in the 251-300 band. However, University Malaya (UM) did not make the list even though it’s among the top 150 universities in the world according to QS World University Rankings, which brings these results to question.

China continues to lead the ranks taking the top two spots where Peking University continues to rank in the first place from 2016 and onward to 2017 followed by Tsinghua University maintains second place.  The Russian Federation, South Africa, Taiwan, Brazil, India, Turkey and Hungry took the top 20 ranks.

These universities were assessed based on scores determined by five main criteria: citations, industry income, international outlook, research, and teaching.

This can be perceived as good news to Malaysian higher education authorities. However, it doesn’t come without alarming signs. For instance, several universities from the countries like the UAE and Qatar have been ranked higher than Malaysian universities. Additionally, the this could have indication that some universities in Malaysia might need to work harder on certain criteria to improve the ranking next year.

The good news is that this year’s results had an increasing number of Malaysian universities from four universities last year to seven universities this year.

However, this ranking seem to be conflicting with QS World University Ranking, were 5 Malaysian universities make the list of top 300 universities worldwide.