GEORGE TOWN, Sept 6 — Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM) is committed to maintaining excellence in its academic performance and at the same time, strives to remain as the nation’s best research university.
USM vice-chancellor, Prof Datuk Dr Omar Osman said the university emphasised on quality publications, high number of citations in indexed journals and within the past five years, it had maintained to be the best in the country and one of the top internationally.
“Three out of four of USM researchers had been recognised by the 2016 Shanghai Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU) as the most cited researchers. In addition, USM had been positioned among the top 50 worldwide in Chemical Engineering and Environmental Science,” he said in a statement today.
Meanwhile, Omar said, USM had faced a drastic drop in international participation by students and professionals, hence there was a need to increase the amount of investment in order to attract more international lecturers and students of quality.
“Right now, the number of international students might not be high, as we emphasise on the students’ quality for admission, not quantity,” he said.
Currently, USM has approximately 24,500 full-time students and 2,200 academicians and the university believes that it is a good platform for local students to pursue their studies up to post-graduate level.
For the new 2016/2017 academic session, USM’s intake is only about 3,700 students despite receiving more than 21,000 applications and they were selected based on merit.
“USM remains committed in achieving a higher ranking among universities, but at the same time will not compromise the number of students’ admission, the quality of education and research efforts,” said Omar.
In the last five years, USM’s overall ranking had improved but with the increase of universities worldwide, the competition to maintain the ranking becomes tougher. — Bernama
