KUALA LUMPUR, Feb 25 — DAP’s Tony Pua called Datuk Seri Idris Jusoh’s bluff today, saying the second education minister’s insistence that Malaysian universities were “world class” were based on flawed statistics that have been panned by a number of academics globally.

Poking holes in the rankings produced by British firm Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) cited by the minister, the federal opposition lawmaker questioned if the Education Ministry was trumpeting selective surveys favourable to local universities to hide their dismal performance in other global studies.

“The question to ask is therefore, why is the Ministry of Education only selectively interested in the QS Rankings, and failed to cite any of the other studies?  Is it because all of the other studies rank Malaysian universities very badly?” Pua asked in a statement in response to Idris’ defence of his “world class” description of local tertiary education institutes yesterday, following widespread criticism.

“As the Deputy Education Minister, Malaysians would hope that he could be more enlightened and honest in his assessment of our local education standards,” he said.

The Petaling Jaya Utara MP said that while no ranking system was perfect, the QS study had been widely criticised by education experts for its inconsistent methodology and conflict of interest due to its business services with certain universities.

He cited Australian professor of higher education, Professor Simon Marginson’s assessment that the British study was “done very cheaply”, to back his claim.

Pua pointed out that apart from the questionable QS ranking that placed even the country’s premier university, Universiti Malaya (UM) at 151 out of 400 higher education centres worldwide, Malaysian universities failed to show on the radar of other more prominent education listings in recent years, including the Times Higher Education World University Rankings for 2014.

He noted that the Academic Ranking of World Universities produced by Shanghai Jiao Tung University placed UM in the bottom 100 of 400 universities worldwide last year, while UM barely scraped through the top 500 universities in the US News’ Best Global Universities at 423rd place.

In the Ranking Web of Universities compiled by Webometrics produced by a Spanish research group, Universiti Putra Malaysia ranked 420th, followed by Universiti Sains Malaysia at 480th spot, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia at 552nd and UM bottomed out among local universities with its placing at 646th.

“Deputy Education Minister Datuk Seri Idris Jusoh should stop making a mockery of our Higher Education system by liberally interpreting what is ‘world class’ and selectively highlighting statistics which are favourable to the local universities,” Pua said.

Malaysia’s education system has come under much scrutiny in recent years among politicians and employers questioning the standards of its students and graduates, despite the government’s push to turn the country into an education hub.