An opposition lawmaker today rubbished the Education Ministry’s claim that the Malaysian higher education system is “world-class” because it had a high number of foreign students.
Serdang MP Ong Kian Ming in a statement said that going by 2nd Education Minister Idris Jusoh’s rationale, local universities would even lose out to private universities, who have a much higher intake of foreign students.
He was responding to Education Minister 2 Idris Jusoh, who on Feb 21 said Malaysia’s tertiary institutions are on par with those of developed nations.
According to reports, he said this was proven by the fact that there are 135,000 foreign students (10 per cent) of students at higher educational institutions in the country.
“Now, foreign students are confident of studying in Malaysia compared to previously, more so with the strong economic development and the stable and well-administered government in the country,” he said.
However, Ong said if that ‘logic’ is applied, this would mean private universities are better than public universities.
“In a 2013 statistic from the Perangkaan Pendidikan Negara: Sektor Pengajian Tinggi 2013 (The Higher Learning Sector’s National Education Framework 2013 ), the percentage of foreign students in private universities in the country more than double that of public universities.
“If we follow the silly logic of Idris Jusoh, then the quality of our public universities must be lower than that of our private universities since the number and percentage of foreign students in our private universities is much higher than that of the public universities,” Ong said.
“And this must mean that the Ministry of Education has done a poor job in improving the quality of education in our public universities since they has failed to attract more foreign students compared to the private universities,” Ong added.
Based on the same statistics, private universities such as Lim Kok Wing University, Asia Pacific University of Technology and Innovations, and Al-Madinah International University have 70.6 percent, 65 percent, and 95 percent of foreign students; much more than public universities which have the highest intake of foreign students – International Islamic University (17.2 per cent), Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (11.8 per cent) and Universiti Malaya (12.7 per cent).
“Does this mean that our public universities are worse than our private universities in terms of education standards?” Ong said.
He said that the percentage of foreign students had nothing to do with the standard of education in an institution.
“What matters is the quality of the students entering these universities, regardless of whether they are foreign students or citizens; and what matters to these students is the type of educational experience they will receive once they enter into these universities,” Ong added.
The percentage of foreign students, is one of the many components of the QS University World Ranking, he said, which makes up five percent of its overall score.
“The danger in giving too much focus on international students is that some of our policy makers make use this as a ‘shortcut’ to artificially boost our university rankings,” he said.
-The Rocket
