Quick update on the 'grading' of private colleges

A quick update on the state of the 'grading' exercise for the private colleges in Malaysia which was blogged about here and here. The Minister for Higher Education, Tok Pa, was reported in the Star today as saying that a pilot project to grade 10 private colleges has been completed.

I've been generally positive in regards to this move to grade private colleges as this will give the public more information in regards to the quality of higher education in these colleges, an issue which Tony has been and is concerned about and has highlighted many times in this blog.

I've been equally strident in pushing for public universities to be ranked as well though it seems that this is not something that the MOHE is interested in pursuing at this point in time.

I think it's a good idea to run a pilot grading system for selected private colleges first before expanding it to all private colleges in Malaysia. This way, the methodology can be scrutinized and improved as a result. Hopefully, the MOHE will make its methodology public when these 'grades' are released.

The only minor criticism I have is the time this process is taking. This was first brought up in this blog in September 2006, almost a year ago. Hopefully we won't have to wait for another year before we finally get to 'see' these grades.