DAP parliamentary leader Lim Kit Siang has accused the mainstream media of ignoring this year’s Times Higher Education (THE) world university rankings.
 
Lim claimed that this was because the rankings , released yesterday, did not have any Malaysian university in the Top 400 rankings.
 
“Congrats to the Barisan Nasional-owned/controlled mainstream mass media in achieving a world record in ignoring the Times Higher Education (THE) World University Rankings 2014 for two consecutive days because not a single Malaysian university made it to the THE Top 400 Universities list for the fifth year in succession,” said Lim ( left ) in a press statement today.
 
He said the report had highlighted a ‘power shift’, where Western universities begin to lose ground to their Eastern counterparts.
 
“What should concern Malaysians is why this shift of higher education excellence from the West to the East has by-passed Malaysia,” he said.
 
'UM has lost out to others'

On a related matter, Lim slammed Universiti Malaya (UM) vice chancellor Mohd Amin Jalaludin’s statement that the university opted out of the THE rankings because it did not have the financial resources to compete with “richer, older and better-ranked universities”.

 
Lim pointed out that of the 20 Australian universities in the Top 400 rankings, only eight had been founded before 1950. For comparison, UM was founded in 1949.
 
“In the Fifties and Sixties, Malaysians took pride in themselves for having UM as one of the world-ranking universities, comparable in academic excellence with the Universities of Melbourne and Sydney (with all the other Australian universities at the time regarded as “countryside” and inferior universities).
 
“It is sad and pathetic that Malaysian universities have completely lost out in the world higher education stakes and are overtaken by 20 Australian universities, of which over a dozen are younger than UM!” the Gelang Patah MP said.
 
According a report in The Malaysian Insider yesterday, Mohd Amin said that apart from the lack of financial strength, UM also opted out of the rankings because it was still building up publications and citations on the Web of Science database.
 
“UM’s policy on this began only in 2008. It is only now beginning to bear fruit, but is not yet sufficiently mature to make an impact,” Mohd Amin is quoted as saying, adding that the university is expected to rejoin the rankings in 2018.
 
The other prominent Malaysian university to opt out of the rankings is Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM).