KUALA LUMPUR, Feb 7 — Universiti Malaya (UM) has climbed 13 spots to the 46th rank on Times Higher Education (THE) Asia University Rankings 2018, its highest-ever position.

In the THE report released, Malaysia’s oldest university has improved in all five areas used to measure the rankings ― teaching, research, citation impact, industry income and international outlook.

Universiti Tunku Abdul Rahman (UTAR) also improved in ranking and joined the top 100 ranking for the first time ever — standing at the 99th spot.

Meanwhile, Universiti Teknologi Petronas also showed improvement from being within 141-150th spot last year to a joint 114th place this year.

The 2018 list also saw a new entrant, Universiti Tenaga Nasional (UNITEN), which is now ranked 171st in Asia.

The other five universities that made it to the top 350+ in Asia were Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM), Universiti Putra Malaysia (UPM), Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM), Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM) and Universiti Utara Malaysia (UUM).

THE, in the statement, commented that Malaysian universities generally had a strong international outlook and achieved high levels of industry income.

However, one of the weakest areas for Malaysian universities was citation impact.

“While Malaysia picked up points for research productivity, the country’s scores for its proportion of international students, student-staff ratio and income per staff all declined,” it said.

THE global rankings director Phil Baty applauded UM’s new rank and acknowledged that the university now has drawn level with many other leading Asian institutions.

“It is great news that University of Malaya has joined the top 50 of this prestigious ranking; it now overtakes leading institutions such as the University of Macau, Kyushu University, National Chiao Tung University and Qatar University.

“Malaysia is among the Asian nations with the great higher education potential, largely thanks to its rapid growth in research productivity and high levels of income. It now needs to improve its research quality to stand out among the heavy competition in the world’s largest continent,” he said in a statement.

National University of Singapore continued its reign at the number one spot after improving its scores in almost all areas.

THE added it also observed a continuous rise of universities in China, as it claimed almost one in every five places in the rankings.

China’s leading institutions Tsinghua University swapped place with the former runner-up Peking University, making it the current second best university in Asia.

Baty said overall, the region has increased its standing in the 2018’s edition of the rankings despite heavy competition on a global scale.

“Alongside the region’s stand-out higher education nation Singapore, which claimed first and joint fifth place in the table, 10 Thai universities, nine Malaysian universities, four Indonesian universities (up from two last year), and the Philippines’ national flagship institution all made the table.

“In particular, not only has the University of Malaya joined the top 50 of the table for the first time, after making its debut in the list last year, but Indonesia has doubled its representation for the second year in a row too.

“It is also a fantastic achievement that the University of the Philippines has jumped to joint 156th place from the 201-250 band,” he said.

The rankings covered 359 universities in the region, up from 298 last year.