KUALA LUMPUR, June 9 — Second Education Minister Datuk Seri Idris Jusoh today threw his support behind the London-based Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) World University ranking scale whose assessment methodology has been called into question.

Saying that while QS ranking was not the sole measure of quality, he reiterated that many still looked to it to judge the performance of a tertiary education institution.

"Everyone says that (about the methodology) but when we refer to anything, people still talk about QS ranking.

"QS ranking isn't everything, there's also the THE, and there are universities that aren't even ranked," he said, referring to the Times Higher Education (THE) University Rankings.

"But when we look at the university, we still go to QS ranking not just in terms of university but also subject ranking," he said at the sidelines of a briefing about how to improve Malaysia's education system.

He added that Malaysia and select universities have been improving on global scales, including that of QS and the Universitas 21, a group of research universities that rank varsities around the world on its 'U21 Ranking of National Higher Education Systems' scale.

"Even if you don't believe any of that, there's the U21 country ranking. So if you don't believe the QS subject ranking, you don't believe the QS ranking for universities, U21 we also improved, we're soaring upwards," he said.

Idris said that Malaysia moved up one step on the U21 ranking scale from 28th last year to 27th this year, adding that local varsities will also see improvements when the latest QS rankings were released tomorrow.

"Tomorrow QS will release results for QS Asia universities, and tomorrow we will make statement for second year in a row that the performance of our universities in Asia keeps improving," he predicted.

This comes after local news portal the Malaysian Insider quoted THE editor Phil Baty as saying that QS employed “very, very weak and simplistic methodology” to assess universities worldwide, adding that Malaysian universities were “way off” from being world class.

Currently, the top-ranked Malaysian university on the QS World University ranking scale for 2014 to 2015 is Universiti Malaya at number 151.

Local universities fared better on the London-based ranking system by subject with UM ranked 32nd for Development Studies, a new subject to be ranked for 2015, while Universiti Sains Malaysia tied for 31st place in Environmental Sciences.