Local unis tank again

Forget about world rankings, Malaysian universities barely made a dent in QS.Com's first Asian-wide university rankings, published in June.  Not surprisingly, Singapore's NUS and NTU made the top 30 list (the universities have also ranked highly on QS' world university rankings last year). Thailand's Chulanglongkorn University and Mahidol University made the top 30 list too, but Malaysian unis---make that ONE Malaysian uni---only showed up on the top 40 list (Universiti Malaya at a decent #39).

Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia placed #51, a notch below Universiti of Indonesia, while Universiti Sains Malaysia managed a tolerable #69. Universiti Teknologi Malaysia and Universiti Putra Malaysia were in the bottom 20 of the rankings---at #82 and #90 respectively.

 See the full rankings at: http://www.topuniversities.com/worlduniversityrankings/asianuniversityrankings/asian_university_rankings_top_200_universities/

Interesting that the country's top research universities (UPM and USM) were unable to make even the top 50 list, which begs the question: should public unis that don't make the cut in regional (and global) rankings be penalised by the government, i.e. getting them to buck up by slashing annual budgets, trim the fat, etc?

Maybe as Gloria Steinem once said, "The first problem for all of us, men and women, is not to learn, but to unlearn". If all the public unis practiced this, we may have a real shot at the world rankings, say, within the next decade?