With the ambition of creating top-tier global universities, the government is pressing ahead with its plan to recruit foreign rectors and lecturers by 2020, despite claims that it will take more than foreign academics to improve the country’s higher education system.    Research, Technology and Higher Education Minister Mohamad Nasir said foreign academics were expected to produce higher-quality graduates as the country’s universities have struggled to improve their rankings in global charts of top universities.     The government, Nasir said, aimed to get local universities listed among the top 200 universities in the world. “Many rectors and lecturers in Singapore are foreigners. King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals in Saudi Arabia ranked 800th [in global rankings] in 2005, now it ranks 189th, they succeed as a res...