It was 2 phd students in the Law dept. Not the entire university. There were probably more than 2 phd students in the entire university back then. The total number of phd students probably HAVE increase, but it's not as drastic as that (from 2 to 400+).

Wasn't it the other way around? The main campus of UM was in Singapore, and KL was the branch.

I'm just making a small correction. Not saying that NUS have not done a great job. They have.

So you want us to just shut up now and say nothing about it? We are not working at UM nor do we hold influential positions in the government. Isn't speaking up the first step and the best way to bring about change?

If we take your advice and just say nothing, in 20 years UM would be worse. And your own children would ask you why your generation did nothing and just let things deteriorate. At least you could answer that you did do something. You took an active part in letting things deteriorate. By beating down those people who complained and pointed out the problem.

The whole point of this thread is to point out how badly UM has slid in the past few decades.

If you're only 20 years old and only know of it's current semi-crappy condition, let us tell you that it was much better in the past. UM was never better than NUS in Singapore. But the gap was much closer. While NUS had climbed up the rankings, UM had spent the past 20 years climbing down.

It's not only the rankings that had slid. In TS's first post on this thread, he clearly said that the absolute quality of the graduates being produced by UM-now is much worse than that of UM-then.