The recent uproar over the Times Higher Education Supplement (THES) university ranking misses the fact that despite the fall in Universiti Malaya's ranking, the university can still be proud that it is listed among the top 200 best universities.

More concern should be raised about the elimination of Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM) from the top 200 league and the fact that other public universities are not even listed. Universities such as Universiti Putra Malaysia (UPM), Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM), Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM), Universiti Teknologi Mara (UiTM) and Universiti Utara Malaysia (UUM) never made it to the top 200, neither in this nor in previous rankings.

Heaven knows where these big-spending public universities are placed within a league of thousands of universities around the world. Naturally, questions are being asked but in my opinion, we have to go beyond rhetoric.

The problem boils down to one simple rule; we reap what we sow, we gain what we aim for. The way our academia is managed has a lot to do with these mediocre rankings. If we do not change the way we run the universities, our poor rankings will stay, nay, they will only get worse.

Despite our rhetoric on wanting to have world-class universities and to excel academically, Malaysian public universities are run and managed using a completely different set of philosophy from those in the other parts of the world besides being run on principles which run contrary to best practice.

Academic excellence and scholarship as defined by THES are not the guiding philosophies of our universities. A fish rots from the head first and this is how mediocrity in public universities begins. Appointments to management posts sometimes are not driven by meritocracy, management capability or academic excellence. More often than not, political leanings seem to be the more important criterion.

Thus, top management are driven by the need to please their political masters. Hence, we see such laughable things as the 'guided democracy' exercise in students council elections, making a mockery of our students intellectual capability. Pro-opposition students and staff are victimised. An opposition menteri besar is banned from entering any public university campus; regardless the occasion.

Resources, time and money are spent on lavish image-building projects, festivities and PR activities. The road to excellence, so the rule say, is to put more the name of universities in the media; not in refereed journals or cited publications.

Small wonder then that the local universities are so obsessed with winning medals at various national and international exhibitions. It is estimated that participation at these trade-fair exhibitions cost the universities hundreds of thousands of ringgit; all for the glamour of winning medals at events in which almost every participant wins a medal.

Incidentally none of the world-class universities bother about these exhibitions and medals and naturally neither are the ranking bodies interested in the medal tallies of our local universities.

But these obsessions translate into rewards for the academicians who bring in the medals; their names are inscribed in the Malaysia Book of Records.

They can woo politicians and are easily rewarded with promotions while those who persevere to quietly contribute to the university's rankings in terms of supervision of post-graduate students, writing of quality papers and carrying out of fundamental leading-edge research are forced to take the backseat.

Thus, instead of giving more emphasis to publications in peer reviewed journals which have large emphasis in ranking exercises but have less glamorous publicity, our academicians are 'directed' to produce more worthless albeit glamorous medals and senseless record-shattering exercises.

The national research and development (R&D) policy is also to blame. Since the Seventh Malaysia Plan, the emphasis on the Intensification of Research Areas's (IRPA) R&D funding mechanism has shifted from fundamental research to applied research. The present philosophy in research funding is to promote research topics with commercialisation potential, thus sidelining fundamental research activities.

This has the unfortunate effect of reducing leading-edge research which in turn reduces our points scored in the ranking exercises.

Obviously there are pros and cons to these policies and principles. However, unless we change our priorities and philosophies in managing our universities, we should not be too worried over our mediocre rankings. These are just results of our own doing.