EDUCATIONAL PROGRESS IN MALAYSIA

For Malaysia’s Higher Education Minister Datuk Seri 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. Malaysia is 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. 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.