Ranking institutions and the govt

VARIOUS university league tables in recent months have made for interesting reading.

In September, The Times and Sunday Times Good University Guide ranked the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), as the top university in the UK and “University of the Year 2025”.

Furthermore, The Guardian and the Complete University Guide 2025 named LSE the best university in London. While it is nice to see one’s alma mater do well – and enjoy some anachronistic bragging rights decades after graduating – the more important assessments concerned institutions in Malaysia.

Of two private universities I’m affiliated with, one broke into the 401-500 band of the Times Higher Education (THE) World University Rankings 2025, making it Malaysia’s highest ranked private non-government linked university; while another rose to the 45th best university in Asia according to the QS World University Rankings, with some excellent achievements within particular disciplines.

Meanwhile, UKM (where I’m a Royal Fellow) made it to 101 in the THE Rankings and 138 in the QS Rankings 2025.

Unfortunately the other two public universities I’m affiliated with (as a Pro-Chancellor and Associate Fellow) had less to exhibit in this regard.

Of course, vice-chancellors are keen to point to the league table that makes them look better compared to their rivals, and the methodologies used are certainly worthy of scepticism and scrutiny – for example, is it more important to consider research output (using citations by professors) as a metric, or is it more relevant to assess graduate employability?

Often, universities will choose one of the more famous rankings to excel in, and then set out to achieve the criteria in a checklist-like manner.

While this may be criticised as rewarding adherence to narrowly-defined criteria, it is better than having no information.

What is certain is that rankings in these tables translate directly to prestige and revenue.

For many students and their parents, these are their first port of call for any information on higher education institutions, and this is even more pertinent as we seek to attract international students... of the right qualifications, of course. I’ve been told many times that student recruitment departments are already detecting many cases where basic standards are not being met.

Anecdotally, part of this is because of extensive use of artificial intelligence (AI) by students in the application and screening process, but it’s also because of a deliberate lowering of standards by agents who have a profit motive for accepting more students.

For Malaysia to be a high quality educational destination for international students, it’s vital that these weaknesses are nipped in the bud.

There was another school-grading of the government’s performance that has generated much discussion recently.

On Nov 20, Bersih released their report card for Malaysia’s prime ministers since 2009. Datuk Seri Ismail Sabri Yaakob came out on top, followed by Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad, Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim, Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin and Datuk Seri Najib Razak. Still, the current Prime Minister received only a ‘D’ grade, to which he responded that a ‘D’ at UPSR can still become an ‘A’ at SPM, earning hopeful praise from the Bersih chairman.

Other responses were mixed. Some rubbished the order of prime ministers entirely, while others argued that the events of each premiership – particularly given the disruptions caused by Covid-19 – were far too different to do any meaningful comparisons.

And while it is a good thing for civil society organisations to compare government performance for the sake of competence and transparency, it is best practice to do so with reference to solid data: one example is Ideas’ recent work on the Open Budget Index (MyOBI) ranking all the state governments in terms of budget transparency and oversight: an initiative that certainly got the high-achieving states boasting that they were, indeed, competent and accountable.

The MyOBI in turn is part of our Pantau Wang Kita initiative which also assesses transparency of infrastructure projects across the states, Covid-19 economic stimulus packages and the federal budget.

Ideas is also part of the BRI monitor, a collaborative effort of five civil society organisations in the region, to promote transparency and accountability in major infrastructure projects funded through the Belt and Road Initiative in the region.

All these initiatives involve a lot of data that can be made available to analysts so that objective conclusions can be arrived at, despite the haze of politics.

By comparison, giving a ‘D’ grade to the Prime Minister might seem unscientific and deliberately provocative.

That’s not necessarily a bad thing though: as we have seen, the provocation has worked to make citizens evaluate the performance of the government, and that surely has a value in itself.

That is what civil society is supposed to encourage, and that freedom must be maintained.

Tunku Zain Al-‘Abidin is founding president of Ideas. The views expressed here are the writer’s own.