Well what can you expect after so much extended by any and all means, mono party rule and the inevitable absolute (trickle down) corruption that invariably accompanies absolute power?
Rhrosty.

Are Malaysian universities performing poorly? The top QS ranking Malaysian institution is Universiti Malaya at 146, then another four in the top 400 and two in the top 1,000: not such a bad result. Singapore has only two, although they rate higher that Malaysia (NUS at 12 and NTU at 13).

Hunter dismisses the suggestion that the ranking methodologies favor established universities. The Raking Web of Universities (RWU) places more emphasis on factors such as the university's web presence. The University of Malaya is at 461 out of 11,898 institutions world wide on RWU, which is a good result.

Hunter suggests that the poor performance of Malaysian universities is due to a lack of academic freedom and expenditure on non-academic items. However, he had already commented that universities in countries with authoritarian governments had done well in the OS rankings. Also allegations of lavish entertaining and trips by university staff are not confined to Malaysia.

Hunter suggests Malaysian universities are "dominated by vice chancellors who are intent on micromanaging their universities". This is not a new complaint about universities world wide, nor is his proposed solution: "re-organize Malaysian public universities from the top down". However, if the problem is micromanaging from the top, then I suggest any top down approach will likely make matters worse, rather than better.

Universities are not top-down organizations and VCs do not really run them. Universities are made up of semi-autonomous units which do the real work. A university is similar to a corporation with multiple business units, or a country which is a federation of states (as Malaysia is). There is a delicate balancing act, as to what functions are administrated centrally at a university and what is left to a policy which the parts administer themselves. This also applies at the national level, with government administering some aspects of universities centrally and leaving other aspects to policy. An example is the way quality of research and teaching is set, either through direct setting of standards, or encourager through grants.

More and links in my Blog: http://blog.highereducationwhisperer.com/2016/01/are-malaysian-universities-performing.html