MARCH 11 ― According to the latest edition of QS World University Rankings by Subject, Malaysian universities have shown marvelous improvements. Five subjects of Universiti Malaya made it to the top 50, showing that our tertiary institutions indeed are moving ahead on the right track.

In the 2017 report, the top performer remained Harvard, which had 15 subjects on top. Indeed, universities in developing countries are still no match to the likes of Harvard and MIT.

While Malaysia's universities are still way behind the world's top institutions, we are making good progress and are moving up steadily. This shows that if we have the willpower to enhance our quality of teaching and learning environment by adopting appropriate measures, it is not impossible for us to move up to the league of world class universities.

In the latest ranking, 11 subjects from four local universities were among the world's 50 best. Nineteen other universities also made to the list. Universiti Malaya remained the best local achiever with five subjects in the world's top 50, including electrical engineering at 23rd, mechanical engineering at 33rd, engineering technology at 35th, chemical engineering at 38th and education at 41st. Only two subjects made it to the list in last year's ranking.

The Malaysian public have never been stingy in voicing their arguments and skepticism over the quality of local tertiary education. While some of them are rational with constructive recommendations, others are at best hearsay dictated by overwhelming political emotions. Such baseless and subjective criticisms are not only unfair to local universities but have also created a universal misconception that Malaysia's tertiary education is outright backward.

To be honest, some of the universities in this country, in particular Universiti Malaya, boast respectable levels of teaching quality and academic performances, although they still cannot be compared alongside top-notched universities in the world. They have done especially well in specific subjects.

Denying their achievements will not do the students or the nation any good, but will instead entice parents to send their children overseas, eventually contributing to our perennial brain drain predicament.

We cannot deny that our universities still have much room for improvement. It is therefore imperative that the higher education ministry and university authorities insistently push through the much needed educational reforms in a bid to create truly world class institutions that will produce students capable of tackling the challenges of tomorrow.

This mission is by no means easy, but it is absolutely necessary!

** This is the personal opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of Malay Mail Online.