Universitas Gadjah Mada's reputation is still recognized by the world. In QS World University Rankings 2010, published in London on September 8, 2010, UGM was ranked on 321 of 650 Best Universities of the world.
The rating is the result of a survey conducted by Quacquarelli Symonds Ltd. Toward 15,000 academics, more than 5,000 user institutions, and 40,000 candidates for S1 and graduate schools around the world. The ratings uses four indicators with different scale, I.e, a review of the academics (40%), review of user institutions (10%), the ratio of faculty : student (20%), citation index of scientific papers (20%), and international atmosphere (10%).
The 321st ranking obtained by UGM is a step down from the 250th ranking in the year 2009. Apparently, this is also suffered by almost all leading Indonesian universities in the ranking list, namely University of Indonesia (UI), Institut Teknologi Bandung (ITB), University of Airlangga and Universitas Brawijaya (UB). UI rangking is down from 201st in 2009 to 236th; ITB ranking fell from 351st to between 401st-450th; Unair ranking decreased from between 401-500th to 451-500th; and UB from 501-600th to 601+ position. The only Indonesian university that is relatively stable is Bogor Agricultural University; in 2009 it was at 501-600 to 501-550 in 2010.
In Southeast Asia, several universities are above Indonesia, such as the National University of Singapore (ranked 31st), Chulalongkorn University, Thailand, (180th), and the Universiti of Malaya, Malaysia (207th). At the elite ranks of the world, Harvard University (USA), which since 2004 stayed on number one of the World Rankings, this time shifted to the second and replaced by Cambridge University (UK).
If we observe the rankings from year to year, there are significant fluctuations. This may be caused by the fact that universities in the world continually strive to improve their quality, and this results in the fluctuating rankings. Another factor that may cause the fluctuation is the inclusion of approximately 25 new qualified universities in the world rankings.
Universitas Gadjah Mada was grateful for the latest ranking and realized that these rankings are used by many universities and other institutions in the world to measure the quality of a university. Nevertheless, the efforts undertaken by the UGM to continuously improve the quality of teaching, research, service to the community, and facilities are not for the sake of good rankings, but for the interests and prosperity of the nation as stated in the Vision of UGM.