UNIVERSITI Malaya (UM) has been ranked 59th among the world's top 1,000 universities in the latest edition of Quacquarelli Symonds World University Rankings (QS-WUR).
Climbing up 11 places from last year's placing, UM improved its performance across four of the six metrics utilised by QS, including the noteworthy rise of 76 places in citations per faculty, the research impact indicator.
Three local institutions made it into the world's top 150, namely Universiti Putra Malaysia which rose up 27 places to be ranked 132nd, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia — up 19 places to clinch the 141st position and Universiti Sains Malaysia which climbed 23 places to 142.
With Universiti Teknologi Malaysia rising 30 places to 187th, Malaysia now has five universities ranked among the world's top 200.
Taylor's University recorded the most impressive year on year growth, jumping up 135 places to the 379th position, breaking into the world's top 400 universities for the first time ever.
All in all, QS-WUR 2021 saw Malaysia's success story reaching unprecedented highs, with 12 of the 20 local institutions ranked rising, six remaining stable and only two losing ground.
QS Research Director Ben Sowter said when it comes to research intensity and impact, the best national performer is UM (241st) while the next best is Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (461st).
"An ambitious country like Malaysia, will surely aim for research excellence as well as continuing to invest in teaching excellence," he remarked..
QS-WUR 2021 saw Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) named the world's best university for a record-breaking ninth consecutive year. Second place went to Stanford University and third Harvard University.
The University of Oxford — United Kingdom's top institution and also Europe's — fell from fourth to fifth. Its compatriot competitor, the University of Cambridge, remains seventh.
26 Asian universities have been named among the global top-100 — the highest number ever. These 26 institutions are split between Mainland China and South Korea (six each), Hong Kong and Japan (five each), Singapore (two), and Malaysia and Taiwan (one each).
QS used six indicators to compile the ranking which measures academic reputation, employer reputation, faculty/student ratio, citations per faculty, international faculty ratio, and international student ratio.
For QS-WUR 2021, 102,662 academics and 51,649 employers whose insights and opinions informed the reputational indicators. QS also analysed 18,530,368 research papers and 138,397,765 citations, recorded by the bibliometric database Scopus/Elsevier.
Check out the complete list of QS-WUR 2021 at www.TopUniversities.com.