Universiti Utara Malaysia (UUM) in Sintok. Kedah, aims to be among the world's top 300 universities in the Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) World University Rankings (WUR) by 2020, in line with UUM's Phase 2 of its Strategic Plan (2016-2020).

In a statement here today, UUM said it was the only non-comprehensive and non-research university that was in the 2.7 per cent of universities listed in the QSWUR 2018 out of 26,000 universities in the world.

"Without having the fields of science, medicine, engineering and technology and is only based on the social sciences and management, UUM managed to improve its ranking to 729 in QSWUR 2018, a jump of 10 spots compared to the previous year at 739, and is now ranked in 701-750 bracket," the statement said.

QSWUR is an annual ranking list of the best universities in the world. A total of nine local universities are listed in the most recent QS ranking issued on June 8.

Of the number, five local research universities made it to the top 300, namely Universiti Malaya (UM), Universiti Putra Malaysia (UPM), Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM), Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM) and Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM).

Four other local universities, namely International Islamic University Malaysia (IIUM), Universiti Teknologi Petronas, Universiti Teknologi Mara (UiTM) and UUM were ranked among the 1,000 best universities in the world.

--BERNAMA