LONDON: Eight Malaysia’s universities, two more that last year, have been named among the global top 200 in at least one of the 30 disciplines covered in the QS World University Rankings by Subject, published yesterday at <www.TopUniversities.com>.
Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM) performed the best out of the country’s universities.
It was the only Malaysian university to make it to the top 50, ranking 28th in environmental sciences.
The university also ranks within the top 100 in computer science and information systems, chemical engineering, civil engineering, and mechanical engineering.
Universiti Malaya (UM) makes the top 100 in six of the 30 disciplines, including modern languages, computer science and information systems, chemical engineering, electrical engineering, mechanical engineering, and education.
The new entries are Universiti Teknologi Petronas and Multimedia University (MMU).
In a publicity release, QS head of research Ben Sowter highlighted that these rankings demonstrate that Malaysian universities are operating at at an increasingly higher high level within a range of academic disciplines.
“Through taking a more targeted approach to ranking universities, we have been able to pick up on the particular strengths of Malaysian institutions much more effectively than is possible in overall institutional rankings,”
Asia accounts for ten of the top 30 institutions in chemical, civil and electrical engineering, and eight in mechanical engineering, showing that several institutions throughout the region can now be considered serious global players.
National University of Singapore makes the global top ten in all five of the engineering and technology disciplines, while Hong Kong accounts for three of the top 20 institutions for computer science: HKUST (11th), HKU (14th), and Chinese University of Hong Kong (18th).
China’s highest placed institution is Tsinghua University, which ranks 10th in materials science, and also makes the top 20 in chemical engineering (12th), electrical engineering (12th), mechanical engineering (15th), environmental science (17th), civil engineering (20th) and statistics (20th). Peking University’s best ranking is 15th, in chemistry.
Globally, Harvard remains the best all-round institution, ranking first in 11 of the 30 disciplines, two more than its local rival Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
The rankings are based on research citations, alongside reputational surveys of over 90,000 academics and graduate employers worldwide.
Since 1990, QS has become established as the world’s leading network for top careers and education.
The QS World University Rankings ® is an annual league table of the top 800 universities in the world.
Compiled by the QS Intelligence Unit in close consultation with an international advisory board of leading academics, the QS World University Rankings is widely referenced by prospective and current students, university professionals and governments worldwide.
The purpose of the rankings has been to recognise universities as the multi-faceted organisations and to provide a global comparison of their success against the notional mission of remaining or becoming world-class.
The rankings are based on four key pillars, research, teaching, employability and internationalisation.
Since 2011 QS has extended the scope of the world’s rankings to include the evaluation of 30 individual disciplines.
The methodology utilizes adaptive weightings for the four criteria, to take into account the differences among disciplines.
Details of the methodology can be found at <http://www.iu.qs.com/university-rankings/subject-tables/>