PETALING JAYA: Malaysian universities have excelled in the Times Higher Education’s (THE) Asia University Rankings 2024 with all top six institutions improving compared to last year.

For the second year running, Universiti Teknologi Petronas (UTP) is the top-performing Malaysian varsity, having climbed 11 spots and is now joint 52nd.

The country’s second-highest ranked university, Universiti Malaya (UM) moved up one place from 66th last year to 65th.

Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM) made a very significant jump up the ranking, moving 76 places from joint 161st last year to 85th.

Entering the top 100 in Asia is Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM), which leaped 71 places from joint 170th last year to 99th this year.

Also making significant gains is Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM) which moved up 48 places from joint 149th last year to 101st and Universiti Putra Malaysia (UPM) jumped 52 places from 154th to 102nd.

The number of Malaysian universities in the Asian top 100 has been increasing steadily from one in 2021 to four this year with 10 universities in the top 200 and 17 in the top 500.

Universiti Sultan Zainal Abidin also enters the ranking for the first time this year in the band 501-600.

Overall, Malaysian universities perform near or above the regional average across most metrics with particularly good scores in research excellence and research influence – two of the newly introduced research quality metrics.

Malaysia also performs strongly across all international outlook metrics.

In a press release today (May 1), THE chief global affairs officer Phil Baty said Malaysia’s improvements in the rankings is impressive.

“Malaysia’s higher education sector is keen to significantly improve its internationalisation, which means 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,” he added.

Tsinghua University in China tops the rankings again for the sixth year in a row.

In second place is another Chinese institution, Peking University, which is second for the fifth year in a row.

Taking third place is National University of Singapore, which has also maintained its position for the fifth consecutive year.

The full rankings can be viewed on https://www.timeshighereducation.com/world-university-rankings/2024/regional-ranking

https://www.thestar.com.my/news/nation/2024/05/01/malaysian-universities-excel-in-times-higher-education-asia-rankings-2024