• Universiti Teknologi Petronas (UTP) became the first Malaysian university to rank among the top 250 globally in the Times Higher Education World University Rankings 2025.
  • Malaysia’s higher education sector is improving, with several universities, including UTP, Sunway University, and others, climbing the rankings.
  • In Southeast Asia, UTP ranks third behind two Singaporean universities, while Malaysia has 23 institutions in the 2025 rankings.

KUALA LUMPUR, Oct 9 — Universiti Teknologi Petronas (UTP) is the first university in Malaysia to be ranked among the best 250 universities in the world, while University of Malaya (UM) is the second-highest ranked Malaysian university this year.

In the Times Higher Education World University Rankings 2025 released today, UTP achieved this remarkable ranking when compared against 2,091 other universities in the world, including 22 other universities in Malaysia.

The 27-year-old Perak-based university UTP improved to the band 201-250 to be counted as among the top 250 universities globally, up from the band 301-350 last year.

Phil Baty, Times Higher Education chief global affairs officer, said Malaysia is emerging as a “strengthening global education hub”, and expects to see the country achieving further success in this global ranking.

“Transformations are taking place in Malaysian higher education, including attracting more international students as part of its efforts to globally promote its universities as well as growing research strength, which is paying dividends as a university breaks into the top 250 of the THE’s World University Rankings 2025,” he said in a press statement on the 21st edition of the global ranking.

The 119-year-old UM, which is also the oldest university in Malaysia, this year maintained its ranking as being among the top 300 universities worldwide with its band of 251- 300.

Out of Malaysia’s 23 universities that were in the 2025 rankings, Sunway University leaped forward from being among the top 800 globally (band 601-800) last year to being among the top 500 (band 401-500) this year.

Other local universities that were already among the top 500 globally last year and are still within the top 500 this year:

  • Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM)
  • Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM)
  • Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM)
  • Universiti Utara Malaysia (UUM)

Besides UTP and Sunway University, two other universities in Malaysia also went up the global rankings this year: Multimedia University (MMU) and Universiti Sultan Zainal Abidin (UniSZA) which both improved from being among the top 1,500 last year to being among the top 1,200 universities this year.

Management & Science University (MSU), which is a new addition to the ranking, joined in at band 801-1,000 or was ranked among the top 1,000 globally.

These four universities in Malaysia had lower rankings this year:

  • Universiti Putra Malaysia (UPM) (band 601-800 now)
  • Universiti Malaysia Sarawak (Unimas) (band 1,201-1,500 now)
  • Universiti Malaysia Perlis (UniMAP) and Universiti Teknikal Malaysia Melaka (UTeM) moved into band 1,501+

The rest kept their rankings from last year, while Universiti Malaysia Sabah (UMS) was not included in the rankings this year.

How does Malaysia compare against its neighbours?

Looking at just the Southeast Asian region which saw a record 93 universities in the region being ranked this year, UTP is the third-highest ranked regionally.

Within the Southeast Asian region, Singapore occupies the first and second spot : National University of Singapore (ranked 17th globally as compared to 19th last year) and Nanyang Technological University (ranked 30th globally as compared to 32nd last year). This is the first time that Asean has two universities ranked among the top 30 globally in the THE rankings.

In Asean, the three countries with the most universities in the rankings are Indonesia (31), Malaysia (23) and Thailand (20). THE said that most of the countries in Southeast Asia faced the same issue of having a “lack of qualified effective academics” who are equipped to lead the universities there, and said this has contributed to holding back higher education in those nations.

“The Higher Education Leadership Academy under Malaysia’s Ministry of Higher Education has identified priority areas of knowledge and competencies required for effective leadership in the Asean,” it said.

According to the THE, its World University Rankings are the most comprehensive, rigorous and balanced global rankings of research-intensive universities, and uses 18 performance indicators for the rankings.

The 18 performance indicators are spread out over five areas: teaching; research environment; research quality; international outlook; and industry.

THE noted that Malaysia has good scores in the research excellence and research influence indicators (both under the research quality area) and is particularly successful in indicators in the international area.