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This paper explores the transnational trajectories of female Malaysian Muslim students through their commitment to piety-minded forms of Islam. In particular, it seeks to identify the reasons for their participation in piety movements and its importance to their lives. The ethnographic research, conducted over 8 months, involved 18 Malaysian female respondents who were studying and living in Manchester between 2016 and 2017. The findings show that the students' involvement in piety movements was due to fictive kinship providing generous hospitality upon their arrival to the United Kingdom, pre-departure programs on preparation for studying abroad, family influence and sisterhood relationships. Participation in piety movements is said to help relieve stress and overcome loneliness, and is considered vital in guiding Muslim students to lead fulfilling and virtuous lives. The findings contribute significantly to transnational student mobility theories and the importance of sociality and religion in transnational migration.

Evaluation of research performance has significantly increased in importance, particularly in many emerging higher education systems. In Malaysia, the Malaysian Research Assessment (MyRA) was developed to evaluate the research performance of universities and Research Centres of Excellence (RCoEs). This paper reports on a participatory action research approach aimed at developing a new framework for measuring research performance of Malaysian RCoEs. The introduction provides the contexts leading to the development and adoption of the MyRA including the challenges and its appropriateness as a tool for evaluating the research performance of relatively smaller entities namely, RCoEs. A stepwise approach in developing an alternative system of assessment for RCoEs is then described, leading to a list of prioritised components and criteria for the newly proposed tool. Finally, some of the wider implications of the new assessment framework are discussed, including the applicability to other contexts, lessons learned, and the contribution to the literature.

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.

The expansion and transformation of Malaysian universities have generated major changes in the nature of academic employment and the structure of academic promotion in higher education institutions. These changes have considerable implications, in particular for the policy and practice of academic promotion in the public universities. We argue that despite sharing one common grade and salary system, distinct and significant differences exist in the academic promotion systems of the public universities. Drawing on one recent study on the academic promotion process in Malaysian public universities to contextualise our discussion, this paper highlights the complexity in the promotion process in these institutions. It also discusses and articulates the attendant issues and challenging aspects of the academic promotion process. We argue that the interrelated issues and challenges, and certain academic practices and habits stemming from the pressure to gain a promotion are pervasive, and that they affect the academic value system and work culture. We conclude by asserting the importance of applying a consistent standard for promotion within a single salary system and that the academic promotion system in the public universities should ultimately affirm and communicate core academic values, and also aim at obtaining evidence of excellent accomplishments.

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.

This study analyzes whether academics with advanced degrees from foreign universities are more research productive than their domestic counterparts in the three selected East Asian higher education systems--Korea, Hong Kong, and Malaysia. The three systems have relatively large proportions of foreign degree holders among their professoriates. The data for this study is drawn from the Changing Academic Profession survey. In our negative binominal regression analysis, we found that foreign degree holders are not more research productive than their colleagues with domestic degrees, and even slightly less productive than domestic degree holders in soft disciplines (arts, humanities, and social sciences) in Korea unless they have further foreign post-doc experience after their PhD. Furthermore, foreign degree holders are less productive in hard disciplines (natural sciences, engineering, and bio-medical sciences) in Malaysia. Finally, we discuss the findings and attribute them to contextual differences between the three localities.

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.

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.

This paper is motivated by concern about the decline in the numbers of males entering the teaching profession in Malaysia. It seeks to explore first year student teachers' views of teaching as a career choice and to determine the factors that influenced their decision to enter the teaching profession. A total of 425 student teachers completed a questionnaire in which they were asked to rate factors that influenced their decision to become teachers following which a comparison by gender was made. The findings of the study reveal that male and female student teachers have similar motives in selecting teaching as a career. Generally, both groups emphasise altruistic and extrinsic factors. This paper discusses the findings in relation to wider issues concerning gender, and draws conclusions which may be helpful to policy-makers and institutions in the recruitment of students into pre-service teacher training. (Contains 6 tables.)

This paper examines the nature of the leadership crisis in Malaysia's public universities. Our main concern is about the leadership at the top levels of university management, and the administrative hierarchy as perceived by both outsiders and insiders. Critics have lamented that Malaysia lacks people with international stature to lead its public universities to greater heights; however, they stop short of outlining good, feasible leadership plans for public universities. This paper contends that the primary reason for the malaise underlying the Malaysian university leadership crisis is that there is no proper system in place to appoint the most able, talented, authoritative and respected scholars to lead Malaysia's public universities. This paper also argues that the current provision in the Universities and University Colleges Act 1971, regarding the appointment of a Vice-Chancellor, is obsolete and not aligned with the aspiration of treating universities as independent, trustworthy and autonomous entities. It is contrary to international best practices of selecting university leaders through an extremely competitive and rigorous search. Arguably, Malaysian universities need leaders--academics (in the first instance) cum administrators--who are inspirational, visionary, respected for their scholarship, and progressive in their approach. The leadership crisis in Malaysia's public universities is approaching such a critical stage that nothing less than a total reform has to be instituted, not only of the law in relation to appointments, but also of the practices and cultures, which currently do not promote meritocracy.

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]

The expansion and transformation of Malaysian universities have generated major changes in the nature of academic employment and the structure of academic promotion in higher education institutions. These changes have considerable implications, in particular for the policy and practice of academic promotion in the public universities. We argue that despite sharing one common grade and salary system, distinct and significant differences exist in the academic promotion systems of the public universities. Drawing on one recent study on the academic promotion process in Malaysian public universities to contextualise our discussion, this paper highlights the complexity in the promotion process in these institutions. It also discusses and articulates the attendant issues and challenging aspects of the academic promotion process. We argue that the interrelated issues and challenges, and certain academic practices and habits stemming from the pressure to gain a promotion are pervasive, and that they affect the academic value system and work culture. We conclude by asserting the importance of applying a consistent standard for promotion within a single salary system and that the academic promotion system in the public universities should ultimately affirm and communicate core academic values, and also aim at obtaining evidence of excellent accomplishments. [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]

The expansion and transformation of Malaysian public universities have generated major changes in the nature of academic employment and the structure of academic promotion in all types of institutions of higher education. These changes have considerable implications in particular for expectations in academic promotion. This paper describes the academic promotion processes in Malaysian public universities and examines the different criteria as well as the weighting assigned to the criteria. Results obtained from document analysis show that there are six core criteria for promotion in the 18 public universities surveyed. Furthermore, there are distinct and significant differences in the application of promotion criteria to different ranks by institution type, with the majority of the universities much more likely to use and give higher weighting to research and publication criteria. This article considers some higher education policies and approaches towards developing an academic promotion system which is fairer and which is better aligned to the mission or type of university. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Concerns about poor levels of skill in the workforce and perceptions of a mismatch between the actual competencies of young graduates and those required by employers is an issue that has been widely discussed in the Malaysian media. There has been an increasing pressure on higher education to promote the development of core, transferable and employability skills into the heart of undergraduate learning experience. The purpose of this study is to identify the development of core and generic skills provisions in courses offered in a Malaysian university. I6 courses' content and process are analyzed based on a model of course provision developed by Bennett et. al. (1999). The 16 courses are randomly selected from four departments to represent a mix of professional and non professional disciplines. Six core skills in this study are identified and discussed against the background of disciplinary content and skills as well as workplace awareness and experience. The 'fit' of each course is described and mapped which can then be compared to identify the use of these skills and the different approaches employed by lecturers in their attempt to integrate core skills in their courses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]