(June 10): Malaysian universities' performance in the Quacquarelli Symonds (QS)  ranking is a reflection of the improvement made in the country's education system, Second Education Minister Datuk Seri Idris Jusoh said today.

He said the achievement could be attributed to the higher number of publications produced by local public universities, which had recently overtaken Singapore and Thailand.

"This is a scenario of the whole country, that quality of our universities has improved."

"I'm always with them to see how we can improve. And this is a reflection that the quality of our country's education is improving. This is the indication," he said, when asked to comment on the latest QS ranking released earlier today.

Universiti Malaya (UM) broke into QS Asia's top 30 rankings as Malaysian universities across the board improved their rankings in the latest released today.

UM climbed three places to 29th on the table while Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM) also broke into the top 50 climbing to the 49th spot.

Seventeen out of Malaysia's 21 public universities had improved on their previous year rankings, with only three dropped and one unchanged.

Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM), Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM) and Universiti Putra Malaysia (UPM) were other Malaysia varsities in the top 100.

"We can see that the basis of the improvement (in ranking) is due to the increase in publications.

"When publications increase, our citations will also increase... meaning that the number of people referring (to our publications) has also increased," he told reporters after an event at Universiti Teknologi Mara in Shah Alam today.

According to a report by Thai newspaper, The Nation, Malaysian researchers had produced 47,000 articles curated by Elsevier, the world's largest database of intellectual material.

Malaysian researchers had approximately submitted 24,000 academic articles annually, compared with Singapore's 16,000 and Thailand's 3,000, the newspaper reported.

"With the existence of research universities, we will see the increase in research, (and) quality of lecturers," Idris said in reference to five research universities namely UM, USM, UTM, UPM and UKM.

"And our publications have just exceeded Singapore and Thailand. We are better than them now in terms of publications," he said.

Idris added that with 27,812 out of 107,838 international students choosing to further their postgraduate studies in Malaysia, it was proof that foreigners had the confidence in the country's education system.

"More than 20,000 international students do their postgraduate here. It means they believe in our education system." – The Malaysian Insider