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Abstract
With strong intention to enhance the global competitiveness of their higher education systems, the governments of Singapore and Malaysia have made attempts to develop their societies into regional hubs of education; hence transnational education has become increasingly popular in these societies. In order to attract more students from overseas to study in their countries (or create more educational opportunities for their citizens), these governments have invited foreign universities to set up their campuses to provide more higher education programs. In the last decade, the proliferation of higher education providers and the transnationalization of education have raised the concerns regarding the search for new governance and regulatory frameworks in governing the rapidly expanding transnational education organizations in these Asian societies. Higher education governance has become more complex in Singapore and Malaysia amid the quest for being regional hubs of education as nation states have to deal with multinational corporations when they are becoming increasingly active in running transnational education programs. This article sets out against this context of growing trend of transnationalization in education to compare and contrast the models and approaches that Singapore and Malaysia have adopted to govern and manage the diversity of players in offering transnational education programs.
Acknowledgment
The author wants to thank the Research Grant Council of the HKSAR Government for supporting the present research by offering public policy grant support [HKIEd7005‐PPR‐6].
Notes
1. To some extent the author wants to draw upon and elaborate some of the points made in a recent chapter by Ball (Citation2009) on new governance in transnational education, with particular reference to examine the changing governance in response to the growing complexity of relationships between the government and the diverse organizations/actors in offering transnational education at national and transnational level.
2. The Economic Development Board of Singapore is a statutory body overseen by the Ministry of Trade and Industry. Its involvement in the Global Schoolhouse initiative is a clear indication that the Singapore government has redefined higher education as industry and business.
3. Data from the official website of the Global Schoolhouse initiative: http://www.edb.gov.sg/edb/sg/en_uk/index/industry_sectors/education/global_schoolhouse.html (accessed August 30, 2009).
4. The transnational programs offered by the S.P. Jain Center of Management in Singapore are particularly worth mentioning. The center offers a truly Global MBA program conducted jointly from both its campuses in Dubai (2004) and Singapore. Students choosing Finance or IT streams would first complete their core curriculum in Dubai, and then transfer to Singapore campus for their specialized curriculum; while those from the streams of marketing, global logistics, and human resources management will do the reverse. In addition to study in Dubai and Singapore, students enrolling in either category would also be given the option to study core curriculum in Toronto. This one‐year three cities program thus exposes students to varied business cultures, multinational companies, cross‐national networking, and international market challenges.
5. http://www.singaporeedu.gov.sg/htm/abo/abo01.htm (accessed August 24, 2009).
6. This task is entrusted to its Education Services Division.
7. To the latter, it refers essentially to the Malay students who received official scholarships to study in Western countries, particularly in the UK and the USA.
8. Prior to the mid‐1980s, the Malaysian higher education was almost exclusively a public affair (Morshidi Citation2010). Moreover, the 1969 Essential (Higher Education Institution) Regulation had effectively barred private institutions from conferring degrees, not to mention the possibility of setting up branch campuses of foreign universities in Malaysia.
9. Wawasan 2020 as an ambitious national goal of development was introduced by the then Prime Minister of Malaysia, Mahathir Mohamad, during the tabling of the 6th Malaysia Plan in 1991. The vision envisages the achievement of a self‐sufficient, industrialized, and well‐developed Malaysia by the year of 2020. In terms of economy, it set the target eightfold stronger by 2020 than the economy in the early 1990s.
10. The amendment has come into effect from 1 February 2009.
11. Before 1996, private higher education institutions in Malaysia had no degree‐awarding power. Even right after the enactment of the Private Higher Education Act 1996, the undergraduate degree program could only be offered by private institutions with their degree‐awarding foreign partners, with students being required to transfer between Malaysia and another country to complete their studies (Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education Citation1999). It was only since 1998 that the MOE allowed private institutions to deliver degree programs through the so‐called ‘3+0’ arrangement with their foreign partners.
12. During my various field visits to Singapore and Malaysia in the last three years, I have discovered the rise of private colleges/universities. In order to attract overseas students to enroll in their programs, private university colleges, such as Sunway University College, International University College of Technology Twintech, and Taylor’s University College, all of these newly developed private colleges have established partnership with overseas universities to accredit their programs, whereas their students can get two certificates (one from the private college and the other from the overseas university). Taking Sunway University College as an example, they grant dual degrees with the accreditation from the Lancaster University, UK to attract students from overseas. Similarly, Taylor University College also partners with University of South Australia, RMIT University Australia, and University of Reading, UK for offering dual degrees for their students.
13. This is a vision articulated by George Yeo, the then Minister for Trade and Industry, in 2003 (quoted in Chan and Ng Citation2008, 294).
14. The ministry made its position very clear in 2001 that ‘the local parties, whether they are professional bodies or business organizations, provide the overseas educational institutions infrastructure support such as in the provision of requisite physical facilities and other logistics, promotion/publicity connected with student recruitment drives, liaison between the program provider and their students here, etc.’ (MOE Singapore Citation2001, cited in Ziguras Citation2003, 101).
15. Information from the Q&A section regarding ‘accreditation of overseas universities,’ official website of the MOE, Singapore: http://www.moe.gov.sg/education/post-secondary/faqs/#listofaccreditedunis (accessed September 10, 2009).
16. Information from the section regarding ‘quality assurance system,’ official website of the MQA and MOHE, Malaysia: http://www.mqa.gov.my/ (accessed September 3, 2009).
17. Several historical cases may be drawn to show the relative ineffectiveness of project execution of the Ministry if compared with its Singapore counterpart. For instance, the policy of switching the teaching medium of science and mathematic subjects in the Malaysian primary and secondary schools from Malay/Mandarin/Tamil to English since 2003 has been declared recently as a failure, which would be phased out and completely discarded consequently. In terms of quality assurance, another noteworthy example is that prior to 2004, all lecturers in the public tertiary institutions were required to have certain postgraduate qualification. However, allegedly due to the shortage of lecturers, this prerequisite was removed in October 2004 by the MOHE to allow applications from industry professionals even though they did not possess any postgraduate qualification.
18. For instance, though as previously mentioned, the MOHE has introduced the mechanism of search committee for the appointment of senior leaders of the public universities in 2005, it is the Minister himself/herself that takes consideration of the committee’s recommendations and makes the final decision. However, the fact that after more than a half century of nationhood, Malaysia has yet to see any non‐Malay appointed as the Vice Chancellor of any public university indicates that this is still a highly biased selection process based primarily on domestic ethnic‐political considerations rather than on the principle of meritocracy, and that the Ministry still holds the final control. In fact, even the senior appointment of non‐Malays as Deputy Vice Chancellors is rare, and it was only until 2007 that the Ministry decided to create another position of Deputy Vice Chancellors to accommodate the non‐Malay candidates (Abdul Razak Citation2008, 14).
19. These are Universiti Sains Malaysia (Science University of Malaysia), Universiti Malaya (University of Malaya), Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (National University of Malaysia), and Universiti Putra Malaysia (Putra University of Malaysia).