Putrajaya believes in "empowered governance" of Malaysian universities and this will gradually give way to autonomy, Higher Education Minister Idris Jusoh told a conference on university autonomy today.

"Autonomy is a process we are moving into. We are moving from being a tight controller to being a regulator and policy-maker," he told the National Conference of Higher Education 2017 organised by the Institute for Democracy and Economic Affairs (Ideas) in Kuala Lumpur today.

Idris said that "empowered governance" was one of the "shifts" laid out in the Malaysia Education Blueprint (Higher Education) and was already in effect.