SKUDAI: Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM) is gradually reducing the number of its student intake from 28,000 in the year 2000, to 21,000 students this year.
Its vice-chancellor Prof-essor Dr Zaini Ujang said the number would be further reduced to 20,000 by the end of next year and the university wanted to maintain the figure at that level.
He said of the 20,000 student enrolment, 75% or 15,000 would be Malaysians while international students would make up the remaining 25% or 5,000 enrolment.
“We are going for quality and not quantity and it has got nothing to do with the university’s ranking,’’ Zaini said adding that 11,000 would be post-graduates.
He said to maintain its status as one of the leading research-based universities in the world; UTM would have the ratio of 1:2 undergraduate and post-graduate students respectively.
Zaini said this after attending the premier lecture by the USA’s Lehigh University president Professor Dr Alice Gast on “International Education Today” at the UTM main campus here.
It was reported that UTM had slipped in its rang in the QS (Quacquarelli Symonds Lt World University Rankings from 365th place to between 401 and 450 placing in 2011, compared to last year’s position.
“We are not really perturbed by the latest ranking and we’ll work even harder to improve our position,’’ he said.
Meanwhile, Gast said there were more than 700,000 international students studying in universities across the USA, with 60% doing business, engineering and sciences.
She said there were 6,200 Malaysian students there of which 66% were undergraduates, 32% already graduated and others were doing post-graduate programmes.
Gast said the university planned to collaborate with UTM on the field biotechnology, water, sustainability, chemical engineering and Islamic studies.
She said as of todate the university already had collaborated with Universiti Teknologi Petronas and Universiti Teknologi Mara.
Lehigh University was founded by Asa Packer in 1865 and has 4,800 graduates as of to date and Alice is also the currently the Science Envoy of President Barrack Obama for Central Asia Region.