Private Higher Education Roundtable

Astro AEC (亚洲娱乐台) will be organising a roundtable on the future development of Malaysian Private Higher Education. I've been invited by the producers to be part of the panel, which includes Dato' Peter Ng, President and Vice-Chancellor of Universiti College Sedaya International and Tan Yew Sing, President and Founder of Inti College International. The programme is expected to be recorded early next week, but I'm not yet sure when it will be aired.

Based on an outline given by the producers, we are expected to discuss several issues relating to Malaysia's private higher education system. They include:

• Given the unimpeded growth of private higher education in Malaysia over the past decade or so, has it since slowed in recent years?
  
  
• What are the biggest issues and challenges facing the local private universities and university colleges?
  
  
• Are there any attempts to attract Malaysian academics located overseas to return to the local education sector?
  
  
• Who are our major competitors in attracting foreign students? Which are the key factors affecting competition? Are we able to attract top students overseas?
  
  
• In which aspects do we need to improve ourselves further to attract more foreign students? Which are the countries we are targetting to increase our intake?
  
  
• Renown institutions, such as London School of Economics (LSE) have recently set up branch campuses in China. Will this trend affect the performance of the Malaysian institutions in China?
  
  
• Due possibly to the intense internal and external competition amongst private education institutions in Malaysia, will we be seeing a trend towards sector consolidation through mergers and acquisitions?
  
  
• How do you view the future of Malaysia's private higher education sector?

I'm not sure if the above topics are of interest to you out there or whether there should be other more pertinent issues raised and discussed during the roundtable.

I do know that many of you readers out there are either academics or students within these private universities and colleges. Any feedback you can provide me will certainly help me build a stronger case in my arguments. For example, I've heard recently that one of the local prominent university colleges has been employing many expatriate Indian lecturers, who are either incompetent or speaks unintelligible English (to us anyway) which results in poor delivery of courses.

Thanks for the assist, will let you guys know when the programme does get aired :).