By Muin Abdul Majid, NNN-Bernama,
Dubai : For Malaysia’s Higher Education Minister Mohamed Khaled Nordin, efforts to make Malaysia a regional education hub is more than just about attracting an increasing number of foreign students to its approximately 60 public and private universities.
It is also about doing whatever it can to enable developing countries, especially Muslim nations, to progress by equipping their people with the relevant skills and knowledge.
“We’re providing access to our higher education, places in our universities because we believe that this is one way of contributing towards the development of our fellow Muslim countries,” he said in an interview here recently.
“No country can develop if they don’t give their people the required knowledge and skills,” said Khaled, disclosing that Malaysia was currently home to 60,000 foreign students, of which about 18,000 are from the Middle East and Northern Africa (MENA) region.
The countries include Yemen, Sudan, Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Libya, Jordan, Oman, Palestine, Syria, Egypt, Turkey, Algeria, Bahrain, Lebanon, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates.
With about 43 million people in the age range eligible to be enrolled in tertiary education, Khaled acknowledged that the MENA region held great potential for Malaysia in terms of attracting foreign students to its shores.
“You will see that there will be a consistent and constant effort by Malaysia, especially my ministry, to come over to this region to establish closer ties with governments and officials responsible for higher education so that they will always consider Malaysia whenever they decide to send their students for further studies,” he said.
Khaled said the ministry was shifting its focus to government-sponsored students although private students would still be welcome to study in Malaysia.
Explaining the reason behind this, the minister said: “Governments will only sponsor the best students and we need good students to help improve the rankings of our universities. Whatever we do, we can’t run away from achieving excellence.”
Besides attracting undergraduates, Khaled said, Malaysia was also eyeing more students for Masters and PhD programmes.
“Such students will do a lot of research and development, and you can see the amount of knowledge that will be discovered. New knowledge and discoveries can lead to potential wealth creation.
“The creation of wealth is something very important. This is the direction in which we’re heading,” he said.
Besides bringing in foreign students, the minister said the internationalisation of Malaysia’s higher education was also about enabling its universities to collaborate with other institutions of higher learning from around the world for mutual benefit.
Khaled spoke at length about what Malaysia had to offer in terms of tertiary education and steps being taken to improve it further.
“We ensure that the courses offered are within the quality framework introduced under the Malaysian Qualifications Agency (MQA). In other words, those who send their students to Malaysia can rest assured of the quality and standards of higher education available in Malaysia,” he said.
The emphasis on quality was in tandem with efforts to mould world-class Malaysian universities, he said, adding that private universities in Malaysia were also under the purview of MQA.
“Among the changes that we’re going to make is that all private universities will be subjected to the Rating System for the Malaysian Higher Education Institutions (Setara) aimed at identifying their strengths and weaknesses so as to improve quality,” he said.
The system has already been used to rate public universities in Malaysia as either excellent, very good, good and so on.
According to Khaled, not all universities, especially private institutions of higher learning, in the Southeast Asian country of 27 million people would be allowed to take in foreign students.
“We’re going to identify only those qualified to offer places for foreign students. Those which don’t meet the requirements won’t get the licence to enrol foreign students,” he said.
The minister said those opting to further their studies in Malaysia should expect to see a high level of tolerance towards foreigners on the part of the Malaysian society which had a multireligious and multicultural make-up.
“This is unlike, for example, certain issues and problems faced by students from Muslim countries in places like America and Europe,” he observed. As people keep a tight hold on their wallets against the backdrop of the current economic and financial crisis, Khaled said, Malaysia offered value for money in terms of education.
“The cost of studying and the cost of living in Malaysia are reasonable. Governments from this region will find Malaysia a very attractive proposition to send their nationals for further studies,” he said.
According to him, mechanisms were in place to ensure minimum bureaucracy for foreign students and the ministry would advise universities accordingly on this matter.