Are Malaysian Universities Performing Poorly?

Murray Hunter asks "Why Malaysian universities are performing poorly" (OnLine Opinion, 11 January 2016). He notes that Malaysian universities do not rank well in regional or global scales, such as QS World University Ranking. I checked the latest rankings and found the top ranking Malaysian institution was Universiti Malaya at 146, then another four in the top 400 and two in the top 1,000. This does not appear such a bad result to me. Singapore has only two, although they rate higher that Malaysia (NUS at 12 and NTU at 13).

Hunter dismissed a suggestion by Dr. Kamarudin Hussin, VC of Universiti Malaysia Perlis (Unimap) that the rankings favor established universities. I checked Malaysia's ranking on a slightly different and more progressive ranking system, the Raking Web of Universities (RWU) This lists 118 Malaysian institution (many are "colleges" rather than universities and also campuses of overseas institutions). University of Malaya comes top, as it did in QS. The RWU lists 11,898 institution,whereas the QS stops ranking at 701. UM's ranking of 461 in RWU is there a good result. The RWU places more emphasis on factors such as the university's web presence, which perhaps reflects Malaysian institution's better ranking than on QS.

Hunter suggests that the poor performance of Malaysian universities  is due to a lack of academic freedom and expenditure on non-academic items. However, he had already commented that universities in countries with authoritarian governments had done well in the QS rankings. Also allegations of lavish entertaining and trips by university staff are not confined to Malaysia.

Hunter suggests Malaysian universities are "dominated by vice chancellors who are intent on micromanaging their universities". This is not a new complaint about universities world wide, nor is his proposed solution: "re-organize Malaysian public universities from the top down". However, if the problem is micromanaging from the top, then I suggest any top down approach will likely make matters worse, rather than better.

Universities are not top-down organizations and VCs do not really run them. Universities are made up of semi-autonomous units which do the real work. A university is similar to a corporation with multiple business units, or a country which is a federation of states (as Malaysia is). There is a delicate balancing act, as to what functions are administrated centrally at a university and what is left to a policy which the parts administer themselves. This also applies at the national level, with government administering some aspects of universities centrally and leaving other aspects to policy. An example is the way quality of research and teaching is set, either through direct setting of standards, or encourager through grants.

Malaysian Universities QS Rankings

146	Universiti Malaya (UM)
289	Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM)
303	Universiti Teknologi Malaysia
312	Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM)
331	Universiti Putra Malaysia (UPM)
551	International Islamic University Malaysia (IIUM)
701+	Universiti Teknologi MARA - UiTM
701+	Universiti Utara Malaysia (UUM)

Malaysia in Raking Web of Universities

Ranking	World Rank	University	Det.	Presence Rank*	Impact Rank*	Openness Rank*	Excellence Rank*
1	461	University of Malaya		601	1158	250	380
2	517	Universiti Teknologi Malaysia		94	1471	164	526
3	522	Universiti Sains Malaysia		984	1090	569	422
4	589	Universiti Putra Malaysia		173	1684	726	484
5	703	Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia / National University of Malaysia		771	1863	677	527
6	881	Universiti Teknologi MARA / MARA University of Technology		120	2141	441	1063
7	1186	Universiti Tenaga Nasional		1750	1377	2217	1610
8	1372	Universiti Tun Hussein Onn Malaysia		1431	2283	1970	1543