Search

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.

This original book provides a unique analysis of the different regional and inter-regional projects, their processes and the politics of Europeanisation, globalisation and education. Collectively, the contirbutors engage with international relations and integrations theory to explore new ways of thinking about regionalisms and inter-regionalisms, and bring to the fore the role that higher education plays in this.

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.

University-community engagement (UCE) activities may be side-lined by academics due to the greater emphasis given to research, publication and teaching in promotion and yearly appraisal. Thus, communities close to a university may not receive any benefits from the existence of a university in their larger neighbourhood. UCE is described by Carnegie Foundation for Advancement of Teaching as the collaboration between higher education institutions (HEIs) and their larger communities (local, regional or state, national, and global) for the mutually beneficial exchange of knowledge and resources in a context of partnership and reciprocity. Involvement in UCE activities progresses from informing to consulting, involving, collaborating, and lastly, empowering the community. It may be in the form of service, outreach, partnership or curricular. Teichler (2017) uses the term socially responsible university to refer to the need for a university to be relevant to the society and that “university has to pay attention as well that it serves the generally agreed function of generating, preserving and disseminating knowledge appropriately”. This paper share views of top management leaders on the current state of UCE initiatives and what needs to be done to create more impactful activities.

Interest in the field of higher education in Malaysia rose dramatically at the beginning of the twentieth century as the higher education sector grew rapidly. At the same time, scholarly interest in higher education increased as the result of the reforms and transformations that occurred at both systemic and institutional levels. Based on a review of policies, graduate programme documents and data on HE research from the Ministry of Higher Education, this chapter provides a general introduction to some salient features of the evolution and current state of higher education as a field of study in Malaysia. It reviews the emerging nature of higher education as a field of study and the political and social forces that have shaped and contributed to its development. It also highlights certain characteristics, issues and developing trends which would provide a better understanding of both the present stage of development and the line of progress expected to emerge in the future. The chapter concludes that greater emphasis needs to be placed on research infrastructure, especially mechanisms for funding, storing and sharing research reports and materials.

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.

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.

Gender differences with regard to academic performance remain one of the more challenging issues in educational research. Gender disparity in education has traditionally focus on the under participation of girls and still is in some parts of the world. In a number of countries, including Malaysia, gender disparity in basic and higher education are in favor of girls both in terms of participation and performance. The dual purpose of this paper is to address and to understand the nature of the issue by analyzing the trends of student participation and performance; and secondly, to seek whether student engagement and burnout are possible factors contributing to school dropout and low achievement. There are evidence in the literature to show student engagement and student burnout accounted for gender differences in school performance. The results of the analysis of secondary data reflected a trend that shows girls outperformed boys in national examinations across school levels and types. These trends are confirmed by results of a survey of the level of student engagement and student burnout on a sample of students aged 12, 14 and 16 which seems to suggest that boys are less engaged than girls, and experience more burnout. The findings are discussed in the context of developing support for students, particularly boys, to be more engaged, and less burnout in school and in learning.

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.

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.

Malaysian higher education institutions, particularly universities, are critical to the economic and social future of the nation. This is so as demands for pursuit of knowledge and innovations as well as for highly specialized and educated people have made university education highly important and a priority for the Malaysian government. This article presents the alternative models for Malaysian universities by establishing a set of scenarios based on the current model and future trends of Malaysian higher education institutions. The first section gives a brief overview of the Malaysian university system and the main forces that drive changes in the system. The second section discusses the project undertaken in scenario building which aims to develop alternative models of universities in Malaysia. The alternative scenarios conceptualized provide three main paradigms on the future model of higher education in Malaysia. The concluding section highlights the importance of understanding the scenarios applied ...

The purpose of this pilot study is to ascertain the level of educational aspiration among first-generation students and the extent of parental influence in the students’ aspirations to pursue tertiary education. A total 71 form four students responded to questionnaires containing aspiration scales and the role of parent's items. The results showed that the level of educational aspirations of first-generation students to pursue studies at higher education institutions is high. The study also showed that parents’ factors influence the first-generation students’ educational aspirations in pursuing tertiary education.

The Malaysian higher education system has undergone many reforms in the last two decades. These reforms have had radical implications for all aspects of the professional lives of university academics, particularly in their teaching and research as well as in their relations with institutional governance, infrastructure and facilities and remuneration. This chapter briefly discusses the consequences of the changing university system and institutional environments for teaching and research in the Malaysian public universities. It then examines a set of available data from the 2007 CAP study to investigate how academics use their time for teaching and research and how they perceive the teaching and research nexus. This chapter explores aspects of teaching and research using several determinants—perception of teaching and research environment, workload and preference, teaching and research processes, perception of a nexus—and compares them by university type. Several implications particularly in relation to the institutional policies and practices are offered to provide support for the coexistence of research and teaching in the Malaysian public universities.

Reforms to Malaysian higher education have had radical implications for all aspects of the professional lives of university academics. This chapter outlines the changes brought about by the National Higher Education Plan that have affected and influenced university work environment including careers and job satisfaction of Malaysian academics. It then examines a set of available data from the 2007 CAP study to investigate whether the academic profession is still considered attractive by looking at the satisfaction level of academics in Malaysian universities. This chapter explores aspects of academic job satisfaction using three drive determinants (perception of physical facilities, perception of influence and perception of managerial support) and compares them by gender and teaching or research orientation. Overall, the data reveal that Malaysian academics show a considerable level of job satisfaction and that they have a high regard for their profession. Several implications particularly in relation to the institutional policies and practices are provided in order to foster a conducive working environment and culture that take into account the demands of the Malaysian academic profession in terms of job satisfaction along with its intrinsic and extrinsic factors.