Varsity puts Malaysia on the global education map

chonghui@thestar.com.my

Universiti Putra Malaysia (UPM) is now one of the top 10 young universities in the world under the recent Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) Top 50 Under 50 Ranking 2021.

The research university is now ranked 10th, making it the first Malaysian university to make the top 10.

The 49-year-old university has been steadily climbing up the ranking over the years, sitting at 12th spot last year.

According to QS, the debut of UPM among the top 10 epitomises the recent rise of Malaysia’s higher education sector.

Delighted with the achievement, UPM vice-chancellor Prof Datuk Dr Aini Ideris said being 10th in the QS Under 50 Ranking showed that the students, research and work had gained respectable standing and the varsity’s brand reputation was on par with established and golden aged universities across the globe.

“When you are giving your best in teaching, research, supervision, professional services and administration, good university ranking will be achieved,” she said.

She credited staff, students, alumni, stakeholders and industry partners who provided support to UPM throughout the years for the achievement.

“Besides improving in teaching and learning, our main focus is to strengthen our research components such as the number of publications in high impact factor journals and citations,” she said.

She said UPM’s academic reputation and employer reputation would improve with continuous strong research culture and output.

Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University (NTU) retained its status as the world’s leading young institution.

NTU was closely followed by The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, and City University of Hong Kong – all of which were recently established.

Université PSL (Paris Sciences & Lettres), The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, South Korea’s Pohang University of Science and Technology, Europe’s Sorbonne University and Finland’s Aalto University placed sixth, seventh, eighth and ninth respectively.

Universiti Teknologi Petronas was featured in the 61-70 band and Universiti Utara Malaysia (UUM) ranked in the 81-90 band of the annual list of the world’s best universities under fifty years of age.

QS research director Ben Sowter said its findings indicated that the strongest challengers to established hierarchies were institutions from the Asia-Pacific region, with Asian universities taking four of the top five positions in the list.

The full rankings can be found at www.TopUniversities.com.