UK’s Paper Praises M’sia For Intl Education

It turns out that even foreign newspapers that have lapped up the anti-Government rhetoric of Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim in the past are now waking up to the transformation taking place under Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak.

London-based newspaper The Guardian now sees Malaysia as a “regional hub” in providing world-class education in Southeast Asia.

“Increase in foreign student’s enrollment in Malaysia has made the country one of the strongest emergent contenders in the international market of foreign students,” it wrote.

“In addition to 11 Malaysian private universities, there are five branches of foreign universities, six university colleges, one virtual and one Open University in Malaysia. By 1999 at least 70 institutions of higher education from UK had some kind of collaborative arrangement with Malaysian private institutions.”

Compare this with the situation in 1995, when 20 per cent of Malaysian students studied abroad – costing the country an estimated RM2.4 billion a year – and you have a sense of the scale of the Government’s success in higher education.

The article on Monday supported the key policies that are turning Malaysia into a fully developed, knowledge-based economy.

“The policy of internationalisation in higher education in Malaysia has evolved due to necessity in keeping with the demands of changing market economies. To transform from a production based economy to a knowledge based economy requires a highly skilled and knowledgeable workforce.

“To that end, the Malaysian government sought to partner with foreign higher educational institutions to offer more educational opportunities for Malaysians on their own soil,” The Guardian noted.

The article was co-written by Patrick Blessinger, the founder and executive director of the International Higher Education Teaching and Learning Association (HETL) and co-founder of the Institute for Meaning Centered Education, New York City, along with Enakshi Sengupta, a PhD student at the University of Nottingham, Malaysia Campus.

“The internationalisation policy for higher education in Malaysia was formulated with six critical aspects in mind (that is, student mobility, staff mobility, academic programs, research and development, social integration and community development) with the aim to enroll 200,000 international students by the year 2020,” they wrote.

“These new policies were soon translated into regulatory frameworks to provide quality education in the private sector coupled with support from international institutions of higher education.”

These policies will have a positive impact on the country in the next few decades. As Malaysia becomes a regional leader in providing international education, this will benefit generations of our own students who would have otherwise have gone abroad.

Creating world-class facilities and widening opportunities for Malaysians – these are part of the Prime Minister’s roadmap to achieving high-income status by 2020. But this transformation will not just stop in eight years.

Najib has focused on making Malaysia a leader in education in Southeast Asia, and the foundations he is laying will take the country forward in the next few decades as well.

The Opposition, on the other hand, has no roadmap to offer in education. Pakatan Rakyat leaders have attacked the Government’s forward-thinking policies, without offering any concrete alternatives.

Now it turns out that even Anwar’s favoured foreign media friends are deserting him, with The Guardian finally recognising that Malaysia is indeed a transformed country under the Barisan Nasional.

The Wall Street Journal, the Economist, and now The Guardian. The Western media are finally reporting the truth about Malaysia, instead of merely feeding off the Opposition’s propaganda machine.

Source: The Choice

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