I refer to the article Paying the price for 'Ketuanan Melayu' folly .

Sadly, the author made one of the most fundamental mistakes of statistics ie, mistaking correlation with causation in terms of looking at the correlation between high rankings (in THES - Times Higher Education Supplement) and English as the medium of teaching.

The fact that 43 out of the top 50 universities are English medium does not prove that to be a top university, you will need to be English medium. If that's the case, simply requiring Universiti Malaya or other universities further down the list to change their medium of instruction to English will dramatically increase their ranking.

Did the changing of the medium of instruction in Malaysian primary schools cause Malaysian primary schools to be world-class institutions? That is patently not the case and using a single explanation for complex issues is misguided and dangerous in the extreme.

The author also selectively chose only part of the THES rankings that happened to fit his arguments. What about those universities that use English as a medium of instruction but are ranked far lower down the list?

While the author's concern of the decline of educational standards in Malaysia is noble, the wrong use of statistics to justify his claim that English is the cause of better educational standards is just simply unproven.