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Leadership has been considered as an essential foundation for universities to flourish, more so in the context of emerging higher education systems. Using an exploratory qualitative approach, this paper reviews the challenges and prospects in the development of higher education leaders in selected countries of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). While variations were reported by the respondents, the challenges were somewhat similar: lack of leadership development policy and training centres, the non-availability and questionable quality of programmes, the irrelevance of western and corporate leadership theories, and the lack of systematic talent management programmes. For the lower income countries' respondents, contextual issues seemed to affect leadership development. Since there seems to be inadequate leadership development systems in most ASEAN countries, we propose a synergistic approach among stakeholders with tracked records in intra- and inter-regional level capacity building to design and monitor programme implementation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

University-Industry Collaboration (UIC) has been identified as an essential item on Malaysia's agenda for transforming itself into knowledge and innovation-based economy. However, despite the efforts, most initiatives have had limited results. This paper reports on an explorative study that sought to understand the contemporary realities of UIC in the Malaysian context. In particular, the study identified the expectations and impediments to UIC, from the perspectives of three groups of stakeholders - the academics, the industry players and policymakers. The findings reveal a number of barriers, including cultural differences, perceived lack of academic expertise and reputation, an inadequacy of institutional policies and regulations, lack of trust, issues of intellectual property rights, and the lack of an appropriate reward system. This paper concludes by proposing policy recommendations and strategies that could be used by the government, university, and the industry to promote further and foster university-industry collaborative opportunities and initiatives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The future of Malaysia as a high-income and competitive nation largely depends on its pool of highly skilled human capital. Hence, the issue of human capital development has taken centre stage in numerous reform agendas of Malaysia. This paper seeks to provide examples of policy initiatives aimed at facilitating the management of highly educated talent in Malaysia. It subsequently considers the role of higher education institutions, particularly the universities, as attractors, educators and retainers of intellectuals, in shaping talent. In conclusion, we argue that more significant underlying shortcomings of talent development are derived from the still transitional nature of the reforms and incomplete structural changes occurring in the national system, and that a change in mindset is the first necessary step towards nurturing and developing a human resource talent pool. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Policy decision-making in Malaysia has long used an approach based on intuition, ideology, or conventional wisdom. But as Malaysian society matures within an increasingly complex policy environment, a move toward an evidence-based approach to public policy-making is called for. This paper discusses the experience of the National Higher Education Research Institute (IPPTN) in its attempts at linking research to higher education policy formulation. The main aim is to understand the perspectives of the IPPTN researchers regarding the use and impact of higher education research on policy-making, and the challenges they experienced. The findings provide insights into the future of evidence-based higher education policy-making in Malaysia and the IPPTN's capacity and capability for evidence-based policy research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The process of globalisation has undoubtedly impacted countries, bringing about different challenges for each country, region and locality. Many countries have responded positively to the demands and challenges through a societal transformation process with an emphasis on developing tertiary education, research and innovative capacities. Drawing upon our experience with two cases of newly developed learning regions, Kuala Lumpur city-region and Iskandar Malaysia region, we examine Malaysia's effort at transforming its higher education system in the context of learning region objectives. Key government policies, namely, the Tenth Malaysia Plan, the National Higher Education Strategic Plan 2007-2020, the Economic Transformation Programme as well as documents of the learning regions' master plans were included in the document analysis. Although it remains to be seen how the learning regions will emerge, the experience in transforming higher education based on the learning region concept is highly relevant to developing countries that are attempting to shift their traditional economy to a more knowledge-intensive economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates the changing state-university relations in Japan and Malaysia. Its main objective is to identify and examine possible lessons for Malaysia, based on the Japanese experience. Notably, since the late 1970s, Malaysia has been looking towards Japan as a model for socio-economic development (the 'look-east' Policy) and this article was written with the same underlying thrust. Of particular interest in this article is the Japanese experience with the Incorporation of National Universities in 2004. Malaysia has corporatised all state-controlled universities since 1998 but has stopped short of implementing the kind of institutional autonomy, which resulted in precarious state-university relations in Japan. Based on the situation in Japan with regard to incorporation of national universities, what steps should Malaysia take in order to develop a higher education system and higher education institutions that are comparable to that of matured higher education systems? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Malaysia, the national government has seen fit to steer higher education policy in a direction that is in the ‘national interest’. This notion of ‘national interest’ is best exemplified by the changing relationship between the State, higher education institutions and the market. Since the late 1960s, we saw the gradual but steady erosion of university autonomy with the increasing dominance of the State. The recently launched National Higher Education Strategic Plan 2020 and the National Higher Education Action Plan, 2007–2010, which operationalised the Strategic Plan, promises greater autonomy for the universities. While this increased autonomy for universities could be regarded as Malaysia’s response to deal with emerging issues in higher education management and governance, the amendments to the University and University Colleges Act, 1995 have not resolved the issue of wider autonomy from the Malaysian treasury regulations for public universities. For the State, in the present climate of political and economic uncertainty, giving full autonomy to the public universities is seen to be inappropriate and untimely. The State considers public universities as still heavily dependent on the State for resources, and thus the need for regulation and supervision. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Producer services growth can change the character of a metropolitan region. Achieving that outcome may require the intervention of government, which is not necessarily a simple process as it creates tension between regulatory and developmental roles for government. This paper will address three interrelated issues in connection with the above-mentioned core idea in the context of the city of Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia: first, the extent to which the evolution of the Malaysian economy has been felt in the growth of the service sector; second, the way that evolution has led to change in the sectoral and spatial character of Kuala Lumpur; third, government’s responses in terms of spatial planning and management in order to accommodate producer services growth. The experience of the Kuala Lumpur region shows how global market forces and national development policies that influence producer service location and growth can reshape the spatial arrangement of a metropolitan region. Managing the growth of producer services calls for new approaches to manage metropolitan change. An ‘enabling’ model is proposed to replace the present ‘policing’ model of spatial planning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Are Asian universities different from those in Western countries? Premised on the hypothesis that Asian universities are different because of hybridization between Western academic models and local traditional cultures, this paper investigates the hybrid characteristics in Malaysian universities resulting from interaction between contemporary external influences and local traditional practices. At the system level, the interaction between external ideology of neoliberalism and local ethnic-based politics has resulted in ethnized neoliberalism in the higher education system. Hybrid characteristics at the institutional level have been operationalized into the domains of governance and management, programmes and curriculum, teaching and learning, and research and service. Based on three types of universities in Malaysia – mainstream, Islamic and Chinese community-based – we argue that Malaysian universities are hybrid universities because many of the policies and practices are distinctively different from the Western academic models. Indigenization of the Western models had taken place resulting in unique form of university governance and management, Islamization of curriculum and the Asian cultural ethos of the campus in Malaysian universities. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]