Saturday, September 19, 2009

Malaysia, Singapore, and Hong Kong wants more Foreign Students

Soch Mel

A recent trend has been growing in East and Southeast Asia. The governments of countries such as Malaysia, Singapore, S.A.R. Hong Kong, and South Korea have been pushing for more and more foreign students to come and study in their countries.

As a quick side note, South Korea is building an Int'l University in New Songdo City located inside of Incheon. The purpose is to have an up-to-date facility teaching all students classes in English so that they can earn their degree here rather than somewhere more expensive like the United States.

Currently Malaysia is seeking to gain at least 100,000 students from overseas to attend a university in Malaysia by next year while Singapore plans to increase it's number from 97,000 students in 2008 to 150,000 students by 2015.

Though Malaysia is absent from the the world's top universities ranking, Malaysia is working hard and is progressing towards it goal. Currently, most of thee 71,000 students foreign students enrolled in Malaysia are in private institutions since Malaysia has a 5 percent cap for foreign students who attend public universities; 5%. Malaysia has also made progress in that it liberalized education by allowing private institutions to be set up in the 1990s. Malaysia has around 20 public universities, 36 private, and 5 foreign branch campuses.

Here's an interesting quote.

"Morshidi Sirat, director of the National Higher Education Research Institute at the Universiti Sains Malaysia, said that now that more Malaysians of Chinese and Indian ethnicity can enroll in public universities, thanks to the removal in 2004 of a quota system that had favored ethnic Malays and indigenous groups, local enrollments have declined slightly at private institutions. Private providers have been trying to attract more foreigners to take their place, he said."

This was interesting in that it talked about the ethnic tensions that we have discussed in class. It was also stated in that article that after 9-11, students have been looking at other options since US Visa requirements became stricter; so Malaysia benefited by receiving more students, probably Muslim students and other students in Asia. We'll see how the education is in Malaysia in the future, the article only mentioned numbers. It didn't make any reference to the quality of education that Malaysia has.

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