Ingenieur Vol.72 ingenieur October 2017-FA3 | Page 11

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Ir. Dr Siti Hamisah flanked by Dato’ Fong and Prof. Kannan
Over the years, Malaysia has
moved up the ladder in the higher
education sector in terms of student
population, recognition and ranking.
Increased local and foreign students
intake and the offerings of wide
range of courses have made the
country an attractive education hub
in the region.
from Australia, one from China and one from
Ireland. As of March, 2017, there were 177,000
international students in Malaysia (universities
and schools). Local Malaysian students also
have the advantages of pursuing undergraduate
degrees from foreign Universities under the 4 + 0
programmes without leaving Malaysia.
In relation to worldwide ranking, Ir. Dr Siti
Hamisah notes that Malaysia’s education system
status has vastly improved. In the U21 ranking of
national higher education systems, the country
is ranked 25 th in the world, an improvement
of 11 places since 2012 (U21 is a consortium
of international research universities and this
ranking project is based at the Melbourne Institute
of Applied Economics and Social Research,
University of Melbourne).
In the Asia Rankings by the QS World
University Rankings (2015-16), five Malaysian
public universities were ranked in the top 100.
Two are in the top 50 – Universiti Malaya was in
27 th place and Universiti Putra Malaysia in 49 th
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