Malaysia is increasingly being seen a regional leader in providing world-class education, with 200,000 international students expected in Malaysia by 2020.
The higher education ministry expects to earn RM6 billion a year from foreign students. Minister Datuk Seri Khaled Nordin said this projection was based on an average earning of RM30,000 per student.
“Now that Malaysia has become a popular destination for the pursuit of higher education among foreign students, more and more established reputable universities from around the world will set up their branch campuses here, working jointly with Malaysian universities and colleges,” he said.
Khaled said that Malaysia is an attractive destination for overseas students as a stable, safe and relatively cheap place to study.
“Acknowledged as a key destination for foreign universities, with 25 applications received to set up campuses here, has proven that the interest in the country’s tertiary education sector has shifted to higher gear,” he said at the inauguration ceremony of India’s Vinayaka Missions International University College.
The minister said the Government’s focus on the education sector had made Malaysia a centre of educational excellence in the region.
Malaysia currently hosts more than 93,000 international students from more than 100 countries, with 150,000 targeted by 2015 and 200,000 by 2020.
“Ranked as the world’s 11th largest exporter of educational services, the government is counting on the increased demand for quality education from students in existing and new markets, like the Middle East, China and Africa,” Khaled noted.
London-based newspaper The Guardian also sees Malaysia as a “regional hub” in providing world-class education in Southeast Asia.
“Increase in foreign student’s enrollment in Malaysia has made the country one of the strongest emergent contenders in the international market of foreign students,” it wrote recently.
“In addition to 11 Malaysian private universities, there are five branches of foreign universities, six university colleges, one virtual and one Open University in Malaysia. By 1999 at least 70 institutions of higher education from UK had some kind of collaborative arrangement with Malaysian private institutions.”
Compare this with the situation in 1995, when 20 per cent of Malaysian students studied abroad – costing the country an estimated RM2.4 billion a year – and you have a sense of the scale of the Government’s success in higher education.
The Guardian’s article supported the key policies that are turning Malaysia into a fully developed knowledge-based economy.
“The policy of internationalisation in higher education in Malaysia has evolved due to necessity in keeping with the demands of changing market economies. To transform from a production based economy to a knowledge based economy requires a highly skilled and knowledgeable workforce.
“To that end, the Malaysian government sought to partner with foreign higher educational institutions to offer more educational opportunities for Malaysians on their own soil,” The Guardian noted.
The article was co-written by Patrick Blessinger, the founder and executive director of the International Higher Education Teaching and Learning Association (HETL) and co-founder of the Institute for Meaning Centered Education, New York City, along with Enakshi Sengupta, a PhD student at the University of Nottingham, Malaysia Campus.
“The internationalisation policy for higher education in Malaysia was formulated with six critical aspects in mind (that is, student mobility, staff mobility, academic programs, research and development, social integration and community development) with the aim to enroll 200,000 international students by the year 2020,” they wrote.
“These new policies were soon translated into regulatory frameworks to provide quality education in the private sector coupled with support from international institutions of higher education.”
These policies will have a positive impact on the country in the next few decades. As Malaysia becomes a regional leader in providing international education, this will benefit generations of our own students who would have otherwise have gone abroad.
Creating world-class facilities and widening opportunities for Malaysians – these are part of Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak’s roadmap to achieving high-income status by 2020. But this transformation will not just stop then.
Najib has focused on making Malaysia a leader in education in Southeast Asia, and the foundations he is laying will take the country forward in the next few decades as well.
The Opposition, on the other hand, has no roadmap to offer in education. Pakatan Rakyat leaders have attacked the Government’s forward-thinking policies, without offering any concrete alternatives.
Now it turns out that even Anwar’s foreign media friends are deserting him, with The Guardian finally recognising that Malaysia is indeed a transformed country under Barisan Nasional.
The education system is a clear success story, and international students have voted with their feet by choosing Malaysia over other countries.