READINGS IN POLICY STUDIES
TABLE OF CONTENT
1.0 INTRODUCTION 2
2.0 CURRENT SITUATION OF HIGHER EDUCATION IN
MALAYSIA 4
3.0 CURRENT HIGHER EDUCATION POLICIES IN
MALAYSIA 8
4.0 RECOMENDATIONS 11
5.0 CONCLUSIONS 15
REFERENCES 17
1.0
INTRODUCTION
Education in Malaysia is overseen by the Ministry
of Education (Kementerian Pendidikan). Although education is the responsibility
of the federal government, each state and federal territory has an Education
Department to co-ordinate educational matters in its territory. The main
legislation governing education is the Education Act of 1996 (Wikipedia, 2015).
The education system is divided into preschool
education, primary education, secondary education, post-secondary education and
tertiary education. Education may be obtained from the multilingual public
school system, which provide free education for all Malaysians, or private
schools, or through homeschooling. By law, primary education is compulsory. As
in many Asia-Pacific countries such as the Republic of Korea, Singapore and
Japan, standardised tests are a common feature. Currently, there are 37 private
universities, 20 private university colleges, seven foreign university branch
campuses and 414 private colleges in Malaysia (MOHE, 2015).
Tertiary education is heavily subsidised by the
government. Before the introduction of the matriculation system, students
aiming to enter public universities had to complete an additional 18 months of
secondary schooling in Form Six and sit the Malaysian Higher School Certificate
(Sijil Tinggi Persekolahan Malaysia, STPM); equivalent to the British Advanced
or 'A' levels. Since the introduction of the matriculation programme as an
alternative to STPM in 1999, students who completed the 12-month programme in
matriculation colleges (kolej matrikulasi in Malay) can enrol in local
universities. However, in the matriculation system, only 10% of the places are
open to non-Bumiputra students. Excellence in these examinations does not
guarantee a place in a public university. The selection criteria are largely
opaque as no strictly enforced defined guidelines exist.
The classification of tertiary education in
Malaysia is organised upon the Malaysian Qualifications Framework (MQF) which
seeks to set up a unified system of post secondary qualifications offered on a
national basis both in the vocational as well as higher educational sectors.
In period of 2004 till 2013, the government formed
the Ministry of Higher Education to oversee tertiary education in Malaysia.
Although the government announced a reduction of
reliance of racial quotas in 2002, instead leaning more towards meritocracy.
Prior to 2004, all lecturers in public tertiary institutions were required to
have some post-graduate award as a requisite qualification. In October 2004,
this requirement was removed and the Higher Education Ministry announced that
industry professionals who added value to a course could apply for lecturing
positions directly to universities even if they did not have postgraduate
qualifications. To head off possible allegations that the universities faced a
shortage of lecturers, Deputy Higher Education Minister Datuk Fu Ah Kiow said;
"This
is not because we are facing a shortage of lecturers, but because this move
will add value to our courses and enhance the name of our universities...Let's
say Bill Gates and Steven Spielberg, both [undergraduates but] well known and
outstanding in their fields, want to be teaching professors. Of course, we
would be more than happy to take them in."
He went on to offer as an example the field of
architecture whereby well-known architects recognised for their talents do not
have master's degrees.
Malaysia aims to become a regional centre for education
(Knight & Morshidi 2011). This has resulted in aconsiderable increase in
the number of public higher-education institutions through the establishment of
new polytechnics, universities and university colleges. The private education
sector has also seen an increase in the number of private universities and other
institutions.
2.0 CURRENT SITUATION OF HIGHER
EDUCATION IN MALAYSIA
Education is the
responsibility of the federal government. The national education system
encompasses education beginning from pre-school to university. Pre-tertiary
education (i.e. from pre-school to secondary education) is under the
jurisdiction of the Ministry of Education (MOE) while the tertiary education is
the responsibility of the Ministry of Higher Education (MOHE). The vision of
the government is to make Malaysia a center of education excellence.
Primary
education (a period of 6 years) and secondary education (5 years which
encompasses 3 years of lower secondary and 2 years of upper secondary) are partially
free. The admission age to the first years of primary education is seven.
Primary schooling is mandatory for all children between the ages of 7 and 12.
Students sit for common public examinations at the end of primary, lower
secondary and upper secondary levels.
Upon completion
of secondary education, students can opt to pursue 1 to 2 years of
postsecondary education, which is the university entrance preparatory course.
At the tertiary
education level, institutions of higher learning offer courses leading to the
award of Certificate, Diploma, Degree and postgraduate qualifications.
Certificate, Diploma, first Degree, higher Degree programs (at academic and
professional fields) are adequately provided for by both the public and private
education sectors.
The objective of
Malaysian Higher Education System is to produce professionals as demanded by
the nation for human resources and also to provide facilities for research and
consultant services (MOHE, 2015).
Currently Malaysia has 72 public tertiary education institutions, which comprises
of 12 universities (Figure 1), 6 university colleges (Figure 2).
Figure 1: Public University
Figure 2: University Colleges
The government
provides complete funding to all public higher education through budget
allocations as well as lump-sum funding for development and capital
expenditures. Furthermore, the government offers scholarships and loan to
low-income students. Malaysia has been able to improve its education standard
with the support of its private sector over the last couple of decades. Large
industrial and service organizations have come forward to provide all
university students the required job training facilities. The government
emphasizes this practical training as compulsory.
In the early
1990s, there were approximately 200 private colleges but no private university
yet in Malaysia. At present, there were 11 universities, 11 university
colleges, 5 branch campuses and 532 colleges (Table1). In the late 1990s,
following the amendment of the Education Act in 1995, and in the introduction
of the new Private Higher Education Act 1996, several major corporations were
licensed to run private universities including Telekom’s Multimedia University,
Petronas Universiti Teknologi and Universiti Tenaga Malaysia. Two distance
learning universities were also created: Universiti Tun Abdul Razak and the
Open University of Malaysia.
Figure 3: Private universities
Four ‘branch
campuses’ of foreign universities were established: Monash University, Curtin
University, Swineburne University and Nottingham University. Several university
colleges were allowed to grant their own degrees, apart from continuing to run
the twinning programs which awarded foreign university degrees. Students can do
their foreign bachelor’s degree programs at these colleges in Malaysia, which
have an inter-institutional collaborative arrangement with host-universities
from overseas. The common collaborative arrangement that these Colleges have
with host universities leading to a foreign degree qualification is either the
Split Degree or the Entire Degree (3+0) arrangement. In collaboration with
foreign universities, these Colleges offer students a wide range of foreign master’s
degree qualifications and postgraduate studies at relatively cheap cost of
tuition fees combined with international standards of education. The tuition
fee is very competitive ranging from RM24,000 (USD6,300) to RM34,000
(USD9,000).
Students can either
study full-time or part-time at these universities to earn their qualifications
awarded by the universities at both bachelor’s degree and post-graduate levels.
The relatively cheap course fees combined with worldwide recognized
qualification make these campuses much sought-after places by local and
international students. The areas of study range from business, computer
science, engineering, IT, medicine, services to languages. For example, the
estimated education cost for a Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Science (course
duration:3 years) awarded by the Branch Campus of an Australian in Malaysia is
about USD 17,000.
More than five
hundred other colleges prepared students for matriculation into local
universities or foreign universities, and various diploma courses including in
IT and computer skills, English and other languages. The government is
regulatory control powers over all private education institutions in the
country. Approval must be obtained from the Ministry of Higher Education to
established a private institution or introduce new programs. In 1997, the
National Accreditation Board was created to formulate policies on standards and
quality control as well as accreditation the certificates, diplomas and degrees
awarded by private institutions.
The total number
of students registered in tertiary institutions was only about 170,000 in 1985,
increased to about 230,000 in 1990, and hit about 730,000 in 2005. UiTM was the
largest with 80,000 students enrolled in its various campuses. The five older universities,
each, enrolled more than 20,000 by 2000. The increased especially in the
private universities and colleges was staggering rising from about 15,000 in
1985, to about 35,000 in 1990, to about 350,000 in 2015.
The objective of
Malaysian Higher Education is to produce professionals as demanded by the
nation for human resources and also provide facilities for research and
consultant services. Nowadays all universities in Malaysia are urged by the
government to focus more on the fields such as science and technology. As it
seeks to achieve the goal of the becoming a developed nation by the year 2020,
Malaysia needs to create a better educated and more highly skilled population.
3.0 CURRENT HIGHER EDUCATION POLICIES IN
MALAYSIA
Malaysia’s
higher education policy is aimed at developing a ‘world-class’ higher education
system that would help transform its production-based economy into a
knowledge-based economy to achieve ‘developed nation’ status by 2020 (Mustafa
& Abdullah, 2004). To this end, the public higher education institutions
(HEIs) are being geared to increase the output of skilled manpower,
particularly in science and technology (S&T). The private sector has been
enlisted to help meet the burgeoning demand for higher education, which would be
too costly for the Government alone to meet, even if the public HEIs had the
capacity. To facilitate private sector participation, the Government relaxed
the previously stringent control over higher education by liberalizing the
regulations governing the operation of private HEIs and passing the appropriate
legislation to strengthen the necessary legal framework to support private
education.
The promotion of
the country as a center of educational excellence and a regional hub for
high-quality tertiary education is clearly intended to develop higher education
for the international as well as the domestic market. Making higher education a
business was a logical outcome of ‘Malaysia Incorporated’, launched in 1983,
which projected the image of the country as a public–private corporation that
would undertake business enterprises as part of national development. Under the
‘Incorporated’ concept, which stressed the essential public–private sector
interdependence and the need for collaboration between them for national
prosperity, the Government would set the policy framework and direction for the
private sector in various activities. The 1990s witnessed the privatization of
key government organizations dealing with public utilities and services: water
supply, electricity, telecommunications, postal, railways and highway
construction. During the same period, public universities were corporatized,
with the expectation that they would adopt appropriate business practices in
their institutional management and become less dependent on government
subsidies. To enable private HEIs to play a larger role, the Government passed
the Private Higher Education Act 1996, which opened the door to the expansion
of private higher education.
To support the
higher education policy, the Eighth Malaysia Plan (8MP), 2001–2005, prioritized
expanding the output of S&T graduates to help grow a knowledge-based
economy and strengthen the country’s competitiveness. To meet this objective,
the 8MP devoted to the higher education sector RM 13.4 billion or 35 per cent
of the RM 37.9 billion allocated to education. The expansion of the existing
public universities and establishment of new public institutions under the 8MP
were expected to serve as a catalyst for similar private higher education sector
expansion. The recently launched Ninth Malaysia Plan (9MP), 2006–2010, has a
development budget allocation for higher education of RM 16.1 billion, or 40
per cent of the total RM 40.4 billion allocated to the education sector.
The passage of
the Private Higher Education Act 1996 was pivotal to the growth of private HEIs
during the last decade. In the mid- 1980s, there were fewer than 50 private
HEIs. The number expanded rapidly during the 1990s, reaching 640 in 2000 but
dropping to 559 in 2005.3 The number of public HEIs increased more than
three-fold, from 22 in 2000 to 71 in 2005 (see Table 1).
Education Act
1996. Reinforcing government policy are the various measures to ensure the
orderly development and provision of higher education and the maintenance of
education quality through two key quality assurance agencies: Lembaga
Akreditasi Negara (LAN), or ‘National Accreditation Board’, established in
1997, and the Malaysian Qualifications Agency (MQA), whose establishment was
approved in December 2005.
Student numbers
increased in step with the expansion of HEIs. Enrolments in public institutions
are projected to double from about 313,400 in 2000 to 653,600 in 2010. In
private institutions, enrolments are forecast to increase by 80 per cent from
about 261,000 in 2000 to about 473,000 in 2010 (see Table 2). On the basis of
these figures, public HEIs had an average of about 14,300 per institution in
2000, and about 5,500 in 2005, the reduction in 2005 reflecting the dispersion
of students to the newly established institutions.
Table 1: Tertiary
Institution
Of special
interest is the fact that, in 2005, Malaysia had 50,380 foreign students,
mainly from East Asia and the Pacific region, of whom about 82 per cent were in
private HEIs.4 With Malaysian promotion offices in Beijing, Dubai, Ho Chi Minh
City and Jakarta, the foreign student population is expected to reach 100,000
in 2010. The increasing numbers of foreign students in Malaysian HEIs would
suggest that Malaysia is nearing its goal of making the country a regional hub
for higher education, able to attract international students from Africa, the
Middle East and Eastern Europe, as well as from Asia.
From the
explanation above, we can analyze that the education policy in Malaysia is
always being changed from time to time in order to meet the current and the
future demands. We also can observe that such policy will be effectively
implemented through collaboration among races and also through enforcing it by
legal binding.
4.0 RECOMENDATIONS
The current
education system in Malaysia is too examination-oriented and over-emphasizes
rote-learning with institutions of higher learning fast becoming mere diploma
mills. We need to evaluate the objectives and purpose of education, especially
in light of Vision 2020, the New Economic Model (NEM), the challenges of
globalization and modernization, as well as changing societal demands.
In this age of
information technology and knowledge explosion, there is a limit to how much
content or knowledge teachers can impart to their students. Any knowledge
imparted stands a good chance of becoming obsolete as soon as students step out
of schools. However, if students are equipped with thinking and learning
skills, there is no limit to their learning. Therefore, the curriculum
(content/ syllabus and teaching methods) in schools and universities should be
revamped to focus more on learning to think rather than coming to know.
Education at all levels should promote the development of higher-order thinking
skills such as critical and creative thinking, problem-solving and
decision-making skills as well as learning skills. These skills are
pre-requisites for continuous and life-long learning in a rapidly changing
world.
In addition, Education reform must be based on what
is clearly stated in the Falsafah Pendidikan Malaysia (1987). Contrary to
common perception, there is nothing inherently wrong with the education
philosophy, neither is it outdated or irrelevant. What is crucial is the
interpretation and implementation of the policy. The National Education Policy
(1987) states that:
“Education in Malaysia is an ongoing effort
towards further developing the potential of individuals in a holistic and
integrated manner, in order to produce individuals who are intellectually, spiritually,
emotionally and physically, balanced, based on a firm belief in and devotion to
God. Such an effort is designed to produce Malaysian citizens who are
knowledgeable and competent, who possess high moral standards and who are
responsible and capable of achieving a high level of personal wellbeing to
contribute to the betterment of the nation, family and society.”
Base on the
statement above there are three recommendations on the aspects that need to be
emphasized for next higher education plan namely:
1) Raising Soft Skills for Higher Education
Students
English
proficiency will continue to be strengthened by increasing its usage. Students
will be required to attain a higher band than that obtained at entry level in
Malaysian University English Test (MUET) in order to graduate. MoE and IHEs
will develop a standardized and objective method to assess students’ soft
skills competencies including in psychomotor, communication, English language
command, leadership, ethics, spirituality and emotional intelligence. All IHEs
will incorporate programme learning outcomes to evaluate students’ attainments.
2) Creating Higher Education Massive Open
Online Courses
A
roadmap for MOOCs will be established to set a clear direction and coordinate
actions to ensure compliance with the Globalized Online Learning (GOL)
ecosystem. This initiative will increase access to higher education and
lifelong learning. IHEs will create more content, which will be constantly
updated. Teaching techniques, materials and aid will be changed to be more
interactive and entertaining. In addition, more flexible modular programmes
will be introduced where learning can be done independently, anytime and
anywhere.
3) Raising Entrepreneurship Education at
Tertiary Level
Entrepreneurship
education will be embedded as an essential component across all tertiary
curriculums to inculcate entrepreneurial mindset and equip students with
business skills. This will also include professional courses, such as
engineering, architecture, pharmacy and medicine. At the same time, IHEs will
create a conducive entrepreneurial environment for students. This will be done
through the introduction of a green lane policy for students to run businesses
within the campus. This will develop students’ interest in business as well as
their organisational and business skills
4) Raising Industry Involvement in Higher
Education Curriculum Development and Practical Training
The
entrepreneurship education curriculum will be revamped by having the right
balance between theory and practical components. The new curriculum will
include real life case studies, opportunities to learn hands-on from industry
masters and be involved in business activities. In addition, industry experts
will be sought, including from the network of alumni, to participate in
formulating curriculum as well as teach in IHEs.
Practical
training will be strengthened to cover all fields of study and also by
lengthening the training duration. Supervisors at work place and from IHEs will
ensure the outcome of such attachments is achieved. An Academia-Industry
Graduate Development Centre (AIGDC) will be established in every IHE to enable
students to obtain work environment experience. In addition, more IHE-industry
partnerships will be established.
Academics
will be facilitated by IHEs to acquire and further strengthen their
entrepreneurial skills through internship, sabbatical, secondments or
public-private sector cross-fertilization programmes in the relevant industries
pertaining to the subjects they are lecturing on. A structured Academia CPD and
Academia Attachment Framework (AAF) will be developed to enable all academic
staff to be updated with skills and knowledge to teach more effectively.
Industry
professionals will be recruited into IHEs to enrich and strengthen the academic
reputation of IHEs. Flexibility will be allowed to harness current talent in
industries through new scheme of service where industry professionals will join
the academic fraternity. Through this initiative, Malaysian IHEs will be able
to leverage global talent and hence gain recognition from professional bodies
and industry locally and abroad. This will also result in higher quality of
graduates from Malaysian IHEs.
Graduate
employability will be raised to more than 80% by 2020. This will be achieved by
raising entrepreneurship education and incubation support, industry involvement
in curriculum development, increase practical training and enhancing soft
skills for tertiary level students. This will also enable local graduates to
secure employment in both the domestic and international labour markets or
become successful entrepreneurs.
5) Academic programme and curriculum review
All
IHEs will review their programmes periodically to eliminate redundancy and
phase out programmes, which are irrelevant to industries and undersubscribed.
These continuous quality upgrading efforts will be institutionalized and
introduction of new programmes will undergo stringent evaluation to ensure its
relevance to market needs, content superiority and other added value. In
addition, to curb over supply of programmes by discipline, approval of new
programmes will be limited. Meanwhile, redeployment or exit plan for academics
will be undertaken to ensure quality in the delivery of higher education and
eliminate complacency. Temporary prohibition or moratorium, especially for some
professional programmes will be imposed while more effective intervention will
be implemented to phase out nonperforming IHEs.
5.0 CONCLUSIONS
With over 50,000
foreign students in Malaysian institutions in 2005, and expected to increase to
250,000 in 2015, it is reasonable to assume that the demand for quality higher
education by foreign as well as local students will continue to rise through
the next 10 to 20 years. This presents a unique opportunity for Malaysian HEIs
to widen and deepen their market share and be part of the Government’s strategy
to make higher education an export industry. Opportunity, however, also brings
with it implications and challenges, which may be avoided with the recommendation
as earlier in this paper.
Malaysia’s
private tertiary education has achieved a high level of sophistication, as
reflected in the wide range of institutions and the variety of academic and
professional degree programmes they offer. Many HEIs have built up their
reputation through the demonstration effect of their successful graduates, and
have achieved effective branding of their programmes through collaboration with
well-known foreign universities. As an example, about 30 universities in the
United Kingdom and 20 in Australia award their degrees under their respective
twinning programmes with Malaysian private HEIs.
Furthermore,
Malaysia needs to realise that the success of the current policy and related
policy initiatives lie in the collaboration of all stakeholders. Both academics
from public and private universities and politicians (government and
opposition) must work collaboratively. Some quarters note that for far too long
now, higher education in Malaysia has viewed private and public universities as
two very different entities, which has resulted in private institutions being
left out of the loop of development.
The good news is
that there is now a document that charts a clear and systematic direction for
the future of higher education in Malaysia. More importantly, there is also
great political commitment and funding from the upper hierarchy of higher
educational management, and a Project Management Office (PMO) has been
established to ensure that what has been put on paper will be translated into
practice to achieve both short and long-term goals in the quest for excellence
in higher education.
ATTACHMENT
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