KUALA LUMPUR (May 1): Malaysia’s top six universities have soared in Times Higher Education’s (THE) 2024 Asia University Rankings, compared to last year’s performance.
THE chief global affairs officer Phil Baty attributed this to Malaysia’s higher education sector’s keenness to significantly improve its internationalisation. This means Malaysia is attracting global talent, international students and increased collaboration, all of which is likely to improve the country’s universities even further in the ranking in the coming years.
“While a number of countries’ universities have improved in this year’s Asia University Rankings, if I was to pick one country’s institutions that really impressed this year, I would have to say it’s Malaysia’s.
“All their top six (universities) improved and most did so significantly; they have more universities in the top 100 than ever before and in addition, 18 of their 22 institutions either did better or stayed the same as last year,” he said.
Universiti Teknologi Petronas remained the highest-ranked university in Malaysia, sitting at joint 52, moving up 11 places from 63 in 2023. The University of Malaya came in second, up one place compared with last year to 65.
Universiti Teknologi Malaysia had the biggest improvement in ranking this year among Malaysian universities, as it leapt 76 places among Asian universities to number 85, from 161 in 2023, to be the third highest-ranked Malaysian university, according to THE.
Other universities that had a huge leap in ranking included Universiti Sains Malaysia (71 places to 99th), Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (48 places to 101st), and Universiti Putra Malaysia, which soared 52 places to 102nd this year.
The number of Malaysian universities in the Asian top 100 has been increasing steadily from one in 2021 to four this year. Ten Malaysian universities are in the top 200 of Asian universities, with 17 in the top 500.
Of the total of 22 Malaysian institutions that were featured in the ranking this year, 11 have gone up, seven remain unchanged, and only four have fallen the rank. Universiti Sultan Zainal Abidin entered the ranking for the first time this year in the band 501-600.
The rankings assessed universities across 18 performance indicators.
THE noted that Malaysian universities performed near or above the regional average across most metrics. It is particularly strong on two of the newly-introduced research quality metrics — research excellence and research influence.
“Malaysia also performs strongly across all international outlook metrics. One of the drivers of their good research quality may be their strong and improving international collaboration,” THE added.
China’s Tsinghua University retained its top position among Asian universities for the sixth year consecutively. China’s Peking University came in second this year, a position it holds for the fifth year straight.
The National University of Singapore remained in third place for the fifth straight year, in the latest ranking.
This is the 12th edition of THE’s Asia University Rankings, with Japan having the most universities in the ranking with 119. This is followed by India with 91, mainland China with 86, Türkiye with 75, and Iran with 73.
70 more universities are ranked this year than last for a total 739, up from 669 last year. THE covers universities from 31 countries and regions across Asia.