There are several versions of the world university league tables available. In the UK alone, each major newspaper produces its own league tables showing the different rankings of universities both locally to the UK and at international level. Recently, the Times published its league table on the THES (The Times Educational Supplement).
Fundamentally, there are methodological questions to the way they ranks universities. How do they measure performance? How do they measure good facility? How do they measure relative skills gained by attending those universities? Each league table uses its own method to ranks the universities.

However, let us discuss the findings anyway.
Domination of US and UK universities is understandable. First of all, the fact that both country uses English as their medium of communications. This helps them over those non-english speaking universities world wide in terms of achieving more worldwide reputation quickly and easily through international publications, graduate jobs, and overseas student intake. In this regard, enjoying the same inherent benefit of having English language as medium of communication, Australian universities are also catching up.
Secondly, the US in particular have dominated the world economy and politics, which in turn creates opportunity to its universities to gain good relationships and collaborations with businesses large and small, research communities, and international bodies. The opportunities in the US are so wide ranging and extensive that we can find universities opening all kinds of programmes and research. This would strengthen their names and achievement which later turns out to bring them good ranks in the worldwide university league table.
UK universities on the other hand, enjoys their reputation as age-old university which retains their tradition and customs. Cambridge and Oxford are notably famous all over the world for their collegiate university system. Universities in London like LSE and SOAS are specialising their teaching and study areas in which they are capable and known for their expertise.
So what we in Indonesia can do to catch up?
It is a very long and almost an impossible task to do, should I say. It requires both the believe that we can compete as well as financial and political backings from many supporters, especially the government. Given the current Indonesian government financial capabilities, there\’s not much to ask from them. It would solely go back to each individual university to struggle their way to be competitive.
Human resource of course is the most important factor. They need a good number of committed and qualified people with the appropriate skills to join the workforce to teach and doing research at the university. However, they must be supported by a decent salary structure and a well managed teaching and research athmosphere on campus. This will nevertheless require a lot of financial muscle to do so.
Secondly, no university may achieve their best without a good quality student intake. While changing the quality of the whole high school graduate is the responsibility of the whole country, the university should attract the best student country wide as well as trying to attract some foreign students as much as possible.
Thirdly, universities should change their strategy from providing a ‘popular subjects’ to specialising the programmes on several subject matters that they are capable to develop them to a higher level. For example, subjects related to bioengineering, fisheries, and rural development should receive more attention that law or economics subjects in which almost all universities both government and privately owned have a program in those field. A brave and bold move may tactically help to attain more competitiveness in more than a local level.
Moreover, the positions in leagues are also helped by the fact that those universities have a good student intake. Being a well known reputable university, they attract the cream of the best prospective students worldwide. This strengthen their teaching and research capabilities even further. In effect, their name help them nail their rank even higher.
So what we in Indonesia can do to catch up?
It is a very long and almost an impossible task to do, should I say. It requires both the believe that we can compete as well as financial and political backings from many supporters, especially the government. Given the current Indonesian government financial capabilities, there’s not much to ask from them. It would solely go back to each individual university to struggle their way to be competitive.
Human resource of course is the most important factor. They need a good number of committed and qualified people with the appropriate skills to join the workforce to teach and doing research at the university. However, they must be supported by a decent salary structure and a well managed teaching and research athmosphere on campus. This will nevertheless require a lot of financial muscle to do so.
Secondly, no university may achieve their best without a good quality student intake. While changing the quality of the whole high school graduate is the responsibility of the whole country, the university should attract the best student country wide as well as trying to attract some foreign students as much as possible.
Thirdly, universities should change their strategy from providing a ‘popular subjects’ to specialising the programmes on several subject matters that they are capable to develop them to a higher level. For example, subjects related to bioengineering, fisheries, and rural development should receive more attention that law or economics subjects in which almost all universities both government and privately owned have a program in those field. A brave and bold move may tactically help to attain more competitiveness in more than a local level.