Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak should shrink his sizeable cabinet and transfer the savings to public varsities which are not renewing professors’ contracts due to budget cuts, PKR said.

PKR director of strategy Sim Tze Tzin said Higher Education Minister Idris Jusoh was shirking his responsibility by saying it was part of a university's autonomy to decide on whether to renew the contracts of 156 professors.

Sim said the universities were clearly were pushed to do so because of the government’s failure to allocate enough funds by slashing RM2.4 billion off the allocation for higher education in 2016 compared to the year before.

Sim said Universiti Malaya, Malaysia's top-ranked public varsity, suffered a budget cut of 27.3 percent.

“The final victims are public varsity students because there will be fewer experienced professors teaching at universities after their retirement,” he said.

“The budget cuts for public universities affect the quality of education and becomes another barrier for us to reach a developed nation status,” he said in a statement today.

The National Professors Council (MPN) had earlier said that 156 professors at public varsities will lose their jobs after their contracts were not renewed due to budget cuts.

They were hired on a contract basis after hitting mandatory retirement age of 60.

As such MPN urged the government to raise their retirement age as per international standards as academics generally reach their prime between 55 to 65.

Malaysia has 2,254 professors of which 1,867 serve at public varsities.

Academic woes are expected to grow with the government aiming to reduce public varsity reliance on state funds, from 85 to 90 percent today to 70 percent in four years time.

“This policy does not make sense and is irresponsible because it will shift the financial burden from the government to the varsities.

“This means the varsities will divert from their objective of providing education in order to look for income and start doing things like opening hotels not unlike what we are starting to see today,” noted Sim.