Fluctuating world ranking for a university is normal, says Universiti Malaya (UM) vice-chancellor Tan Sri Dr Ghauth Jasmon.
“No university’s ranking continues to rise. What’s important is that its ups and downs should on average be positive to show progress,” he said in a statement today.
For UM, he said, ranked 156th last year was the best in the university’s history and its ranking at 89th eight years ago was due to “error in data sent by UM to QS-THE Ranking at the time”.
He said this on UM’s ranking, which fell 11 steps from 156th in the QS World University-Rankings 2012/2013 study to 167th in the 2013/2014 edition.
According to Ghauth, UM’s ranking fell because the number of evaluators increased by 35%, with a majority of them unfamiliar with universities in the Asia Pacific region.
“In the QS World University Ranking 2013 evaluation, a total of 62,000 evaluators were involved compared to 40,300 last year. This also caused scores in the Academic Survey to be lower and rankings for universities in the Asia Pacific region to drop,” he added. – Bernama, September 13, 2013.
