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Malaysian media are full of news on talks about unity. While UMNO insists on Malay Unity, Barisan Alternatif emphasizes on national unity. Other news items such as quality or falling quality in education hardly attract attention.

Now, there are about 200,000 students in public IHLs, IHLs and over 150,000 in about 300 private IHLs. About 15% of Malaysians have been to IHLs.

The 1996 Education Act aims at world-class Malaysian education and the Government plans to attain a developed nation by 2020. This means that at least 30% of Malaysians have to go through IHLs. Hence, the Government increases the enrollment in each of the seven older universities to 20,000 like University of Malaya, Malaysian Science University and Malaysian National University. Mara University has over 60,000 students.

QUALITY

The sudden increase of enrollment in IHLs gives rise to shortage of professors, lecturers and equipment. The Government has not done enough to correct this. Therefore, the quality of education goes down.

Since 19 February, 2001, the National University Hospital, Cheras, has started a campaign to raise quality in various aspects including teaching and service to patients. We hope that it continues to do so.

In 1996, the Government set up the National Accreditation Board to supervise the standard of courses in private IHLs. Although it has trained about 300 assessors to help accredit the quality of programmes in private IHLs, it does not have enough specialists to do so.

Can we ensure that over 350,000 students in public and private IHLs attend courses of international standard? The Education talks about the National Accreditation Board. But, it stays clear of the monitoring of quality of education in public IHLs.

If 15% Malaysians with tertiary education is taken as correct, then there are about three million such Malaysians out of the population of 22 million. If this is increased to 30%, there will be at least 6.6 million Malaysians. It is difficult to make sure that they receive education of international standard. Therefore, we must improve the efficiency of monitoring the quality of education.

Dr. Tan Seng Giaw