You have to compare the universities because you have to rank them with the best in order to improve, not to go backwards.  Look at NUS, it was a branch of the University of Malaya in Singapore and look where it is now?  24 in QS World Rankings and the top University in Asia.

Do you know, when I was in school during the 1970s, my parents managed to get me a MU student to come and tutor me in Maths.  All my friends were envious because he was a MU student.  Up to the 1970s, MU students were the creme de la creme of students in Malaysia and Singapore!  Not just Malaysia.  They were the elite.  We used to look at them in awe?

However, due to the education quotas for Bumiputras, the dumbing down of the syllabus and the tertiary education system in general, in order to make it easier for Malays to qualify for local public universities, it all went downhill from the 1980s onwards.  Nowadays, we look down at MU graduates because they can't seem to string an English sentence together without killing it.  As for MU graduates, well, those that I've met always seem to tell me that overseas degrees are far better than theirs.

How many people here know that when the medical course at Malaya University was first started in early 1970s, it was designed to be on par with those of UK universities. In fact, it was actually recognised by the British Medical Council ("BMC") so that it had equivalent status with British Universities medical degrees!  However, due to the dumbing down of Malaysian degrees by the government over the years, in 1989, it was de-recognised by the BMC.

Being typical Malaysian, the Malay dean of the medical faculty claimed that it was de-recognised because the course was being thought in Malay. An ex-MU medical student who wrote to the New Straits Times pointedly told the Dean that if that was the case, why did the BMC continue to recognise medical degrees from European and Japanese universities, which certainly weren't in English!

I understand from friends and relatives who qualified as doctors from local universities that they try to sit for the UK Royal College of Physicians professional exams in order to obtain professional qualifications which are internationally recognised, in case they want to join the Malaysian Brain Drain. Shows you the quality of our local medical graduates, now that medical colleges and degrees seem to be mushrooming like mad!

I have a cousin who graduated from UNIMAS 2nd batch of medical students.  I understand that up to now, that there seems to be problems with recognition from the MMA.  She was the one who told me that almost everybody in her year, including herself, were trying to pass the UK Royal College of Physicians exams.