SETARA ratings announced

Again, not a particularly sexy topic but one which I've covered for some time now. It was announced a while back, in November 2007, that USM topped the public perception ratings in Malaysia under the Academic Reputation Survey (ARES). Now, it seems that UM has topped the SETARA survey of our public universities.

The aim of SETARA or the Rating System for Malaysian Higher Education Institutions 2007 is to provide an internal, qualitative complementary survey to ARES. For a description of the two surveys, look no other than to the current UKM VC, Sharifah Hapsah, who was one of the main drivers behind the ratings system at MQA before she took the position at UKM.

Two reports in the Star, here and here, document some of the main findings of the SETARA rankings. A more comprehensive report can be found here. Some of the nitty gritty details can be found at the MQA website though I don't think they have released the full details / reports of either the ARES or SETARA rankings on the website.

According to one of the Star reports, Setara involves a quantitative survey where data collected is analysed according to six domains – academic staff (25%), students' selectivity (10%), research (15%), academic programmes (25%), resources (15%), and management (10%).

Most of this data is collected from the universities themselves and evaluated by the staff at MQA.

A total of 17 public universities were rated and placed in three categories – research, broad-based and specialised.

Only UM managed to obtain 5 stars (out of six) among the research universities.

International Islamic University Malaysia and Universiti Teknologi Mara both scored four stars each in the broad-based category, while Universiti Teknologi Malaysia was the only one to receive a three-star rating for specialised universities.

I think one can be critical about the veracity of such ranking systems, especially when UM is capable of obtaining 5 stars out of 6. The danger of inflating the rankings for some schools like UM is that they don't have very far to rise.

Given that this rating system is still in its infancy, I would not be too critical of the findings as of now. I would like to read the reports in more detail if they are eventually released by the MQA but for now, I'm glad that the process of collecting such information is already in place. No doubt the system will be improved over time.

It was also reported that, as a benchmark, the compilers also visited the National University of Singapore, University of Melbourne, Indian Institute of Technology, Mahidol University and University of Technology Sydney to test Setara against those institutions.

We'll be watching this closely.