COMMENT Some 20 years ago, Malaysia envisaged itself to be an education hub for the region. I was among the early batch of marketers who worked at placing Malaysia on the minds of the early batch of international students.

Today, I am told that we have already breached the 100,000 mark, something which appeared quite impossible back then. I do not have the latest figures, but we are probably moving towards the next target of 200,000 international students in the country.

Most of these students are enrolled in various institutions of higher learning spread out in major cities around the country.

Although the private education sector has taken great strides to achieve the nation’s aspirations, there are still areas that need to be ironed out.

Foremost is the quality of education we are providing to our children in both its primary and secondary schools; urban parents have different aspirations compared to the rural folk.

While we cannot deprive urban children of a good education, we cannot overlook the children in the rural areas who need to be on par with the rest of the world. To bring Malaysia to the next level, Malaysians has to be open to learn beyond just the national language.

In times to come, these younger generation of Malaysians will move to the cities or work in other countries as expatriates, and if they cannot communicate well, they are as good as the foreigners who serve as our domestic maids.

Standard below par

The Malaysian Qualifications Agency (MQA) has to be more vigilant in checking the colleges to ensure that they do not offer programmes which are not approved.

Some have become universities, although they allegedly did not qualify for the status. In one particular institution that I had worked for, after they became a university college, they started conferring professorships to some 30-odd staff, few of whom had a doctorate degree or conducted sufficient research work to prove their worth.

While working with another public-listed education institution some 15 years ago, I was shocked to learn that we were offering a nursing programme. A batch of students had arrived at the college for the programme, but we were never told that we had a nursing school.

The same institution was also offering what they did not call as 3+0 programmes. For many years, they were in fact running distance learning programmes under the guise of a 3+0 programme.

In another college in Cheras, the School of Medicine was set up without even having all the facilities in place for its first batch of students. I remember the then-health minister, Dr Chua Soi Lek, had been invited to a signing ceremony for another programme.

Upon visiting the School of Medicine, I was told that Dr Chua was not impressed with the set-up. If I had a child wanting to do medicine, I would not have even considered enrolling him or her there.

Prior to this, when I was working with the Monash campus in Bandar Sunway, despite telling the university time and again that there was a big demand for its medical programme, it took almost nine years before the programme was introduced.

The only explanation I was given was that Monash would not agree to set up the medical school until and unless everything was in place.

Besides just looking at the particular programme, MQA should also look at the library and other student resources to see if there are adequate for the number of students enrolled.

The library is the place where students can look up for relevant books to carry out their research, yet I have heard many lecturers complaining to me that they can never get the books that they requested, because the budget was allegedly controlled by the vice-chancellor’s relative.

As a result, the university in particular has a small collection of books compared to, say, the Tun Hussein Onn Library at Sunway University. Without access to books, it is hard for any student to carry out any form of learning.

This is why I recently recommended to my client how he can best spend a RM10,000 contribution in honour of his late mother. I told him that a scholarship of RM10,000 can only impact one student in a public university, but with that same amount of money, a good collection of civil engineering books in the library of the venue sponsor of our event would help many students who will be able to carry out their research.

Immigration woes

Several years ago, I was shown a newspaper article talking about a college in Kepong that conducted English classes with only two (or maybe, three) students attending.

Although the college boasted of having about a hundred international students from both Africa and China for the particular English programme, no one bothered about the loophole that was being used to get student visas even for non-students.

A friend of mine who showed me the article said she suspected she knew the name of the college. She had made enquiries on behalf of a monk who wanted a visa to visit Malaysia, but had a lot of difficulties getting a genuine visa.

Upon enquiry, she was told it was easy to get the student visa. The monk had to just pay for the English programme and an application for the student visa will be made on his behalf. Being a religious person, my friend and the monk decided not to proceed with the plan.

I am not surprised that this is still happening in a number of institutions including the bigger ones, too. There are also cases where I knew of African students whose families were cheated by a syndicate in their home countries.

Because to the young people and their parents, a good education was their only way to get out of the vicious cycle of poverty.

Meanwhile, we still read of complaints from international students enrolled with the more reputable institutions of higher learning who are experiencing visa delays, leaving them in limbo. There are also the occasional complaints where it is difficult to apply for work visa for lecturers from overseas.

Theological education in Malaysia is also recognised to be one of the top in the region, and seminaries are attracting young people from the region, wanting to enrol here. However, the hurdle faced by these seminaries is the same as the complaints raised by the other private education institutions.

Efforts have to be placed by the new director-general of Immigration Mustafar Ali to ensure that such issues do not crop up again, if we want the country to truly become a regional education hub.

STEPHEN NG is an ordinary citizen with an avid interest in following political developments in the country since 2008.