Malaysia held its 15th General Elections on 19 November 2022, which resulted in a hung parliament as the leading coalitions did not have the numbers to form a government. As advised by the Malaysian King, a unity government has since been established under the leadership of Anwar Ibrahim as Malaysia’s tenth Prime Minister. Anwar Ibrahim has recently announced his full cabinet on 2 December 2022, which also revealed that Khaled Nordin will hold the full ministerial post of Malaysia’s Ministry of Higher Education. Prior to the Prime Minister’s announcement of his cabinet line-up, there were public debates on the need to merge two ministries which are the Ministry of Education and Ministry of Higher Education into one.

 

British Council Comments

This is the second appointment of Khaled Nordin in leading the Ministry of Higher Education in Malaysia. He was Malaysia’s Minister of Higher Education from 2008 until 2013 where he introduced the need for autonomy in Malaysian universities’ administration, funding reform (performance-based funding) and continuous learning pathways under the National Higher Education Strategic Plan beyond 2020. The Malaysian Higher Education Blueprint introduced in 2015 has reached its final wave where the Ministry of Higher Education needs to consolidate their high-level initiatives and policies review, which will be interesting to observe, especially on the outcomes of higher learning institutions’ autonomy implementation and TVET rebranding.

For the UK, we expect that international collaborations will continue to be encouraged under the new Minister and specifically, we expect to see collaborations in academic exchanges, curriculum co-development in priority subject areas such as digital innovation and graduate employability to be prioritised.

 

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