The Universiti Tun Abdul Razak (Unitar) campus is in appalling condition but various measures are being taken to improve its facilities and make the study environment more conducive, said its president Dr Syed Othman Alhabshi today.

A group of Unitar students in an e-mail to malaysiakini yesterday claimed that many students were dissatisfied with the Unitar campus in Kelana Jaya, Selangor which was described as the "shoplot university".

Among the grievances the students raised was that the university has no campus life as it did not have hostels to at least house first-year students and that there are not enough computers, of which the mouses and keyboards get stolen regularly.

Syed Othman ( photo ) conceded that the campus condition was "not up to mark" and therefore the university management has planned to refurbish the campus starting next month by purchasing over 400 new Internet-connected computers.

"It is appalling. I don't blame the students but they must give us time to improve. The university was o­nly set up four and a half years ago, it takes time to improve.

"Give us another two years or so, things will get much better," he said when contacted.

However, he also urged the students to help maintain the facilities in Unitar.

"We hope they will not vandalise the common properties. Some of them are vandalising the computers out of frustration because they feel that the machines are not good. That makes the problem worse," he said.

Congestion o­n campus

On the congestion of the campus, he said the university - which currently has 7,000 students -channels 50 percent of its students to the seven study centres set up by Unitar nationwide.

In addition, the university is also establishing more learning centres in collaboration with other institutes of higher learning.

"While we still have three intakes a year, we are trying to reduce the congestion by placing our students at other centres. At the same time, we have stopped admitting SPM graduates into Unitar.

"We have identified our partners to set up more learning centres and this is pending approval from the Education Ministry," he said.

Syed Othman also said while the Unitar does not have as many books in its library as other universities do, it was important to note that the university has allocated much resources to develop its o­nline library in line with the e-learning concept.

"There are many o­nline materials and references provided by Unitar, including over 1,000 journal titles. With all these, we don't need physical books and magazines as o­nline resources will be more convenient to the students," he said.

On the lecturers' poor command of English, Syed Othman said this was a fact as many of them came from national schools which used Bahasa Melayu as the teaching medium.

"But I don't expect their English to be very good. As long they can make the students understand, it is okay," he said.

No delays in loan payment

Syed Othman also denied that Unitar was delaying the payment of National Higher Education Fund (PTPTN) to students by six to eight months.

"We take not more than 10 working days to disburse the money o­nce we receive it from PTPTN," he said.

He said there were previous instances where PTPTN gave Unitar the money without the list of recipients, thus causing a delay in disbursement, but this has been solved.

Set up in December 1997, Unitar claims to the country's first Multimedia Super Corridor (MSC)-status virtual university which is aimed at providing education though the o­nline technology and facilitator-based tutorials or academic meetings.

The chancellor of Unitar is Rahah Mohd Noah, mother of Defence Minister Najib Abdul Razak and wife of the late Tun Abdul Razak, Malaysia's second Prime Minister.

The university is wholly owned by KUB Malaysia Berhad, a public-listed company.