Malaysia tabled its mid-term review of the Eleventh Malaysia Plan this week, reviewing achievements between 2016 – 2017 and outlining strategies for 2018 – 2020. Reforming the country was the key focus; with improving governance, enhancing the well-being of the people, boosting people power and accelerating innovation being others. The country’s newly-minted, second-term Prime Minister has strong ambitions in putting the country back on track, announcing reforms and new priorities and pushing back the country’s target to achieve high-income status by at least four years.
One of the pillars in the mid-term review focused on empowering human capital, focusing on creating a skilled workforce and addressing the pressing youth unemployment rate. Raising the quality of the education system and higher education graduates, improving student outcomes at the school level, and strengthening research capabilities are some of the priority areas under this pillar.
Since the change in government in the 14th General election, little change in policies have been announced in the education sector. In the country’s new cabinet line-up, a Minister of Education and a Deputy Minister are tasked to look after the Education Minister, unlike the previous government where the Ministry of Education and Ministry of Higher Education were two separate entities.
Focus of the Ministry has been surrounding reforms at the school, rather than at the higher education level, although there has been calls for the new Minister to review the overseas scholarship policies and address the ‘underperformance’ of the education system.
Since taking helm, the new government has granted Malaysia’s 20 public university autonomous status, set up new committees to review the national education system and to develop the Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) sector. On the flip side, the government has called for a freeze in MyBrain15, a scholarship programme meant for individuals intending to further their studies in Masters or PhD in local higher education institutions. Funding for the Skills Development Fund Corporation (PTPK) for private skills training has also been halted, allegedly due to the misappropriation of funds during the previous administration. These announcements have not gone down well on the general public but were deemed necessary due to ‘lack of funds’.
Commentary by Jennifer Wan, British Council Malaysia
As mentioned above, there has not been any review or changes in policies related to education since the new government took helm and drastic changes in policies are not expected to take place that soon either. It would be worthwhile to wait until the first week of November, where the federal budget is due to be tabled in Parliament for any announcements. Things to look out for would include the allocations of scholarships, development budgets for public universities and key sectors which the government would invest and focus on.
The outlook of the re-instatement of overseas scholarships is not highly positive as the key objective of the new government is to get the country out of its high debt levels. There is also interest in developing the capacities of the local higher education sector, so, scholarship funds could be diverted to local higher education institutions instead. In a recent development on the Public Services Department (PSD) scholarship, only 13 out of the 54 applications for an overseas scholarship were approved after a lengthy appeal. Not only that, for these 13 students, the PSD could only fund 80 per cent of the total cost. The rest of the students were sponsored to study locally.
There were no announcements by other corporate sponsors such as MARA, or Khazanah Nasional although there were large shake-ups in the board members of these two government-linked bodies.
UK institutions which had traditionally relied on scholarship students in Malaysia should keep their relationship with these sponsorship bodies warm but start diversifying into full-fee paying students. However, many full-fee paying students would be looking at affordable options and thus, will consider institutions with some sort of TNE arrangements.
Looking further beyond, as the capacity of the local higher education system grows, the UK sector might see themselves facing even tougher competition, especially in convincing Malaysians travel overseas for their higher education.