Higher Education – Access and Equity

Building capacity alone will not address equity and access issues that confront a significant part of our population.

Institutions and regulatory agents must be more proactive in their roles to bring people with limited access and reach to higher education into educational institutions. Malaysian regulatory services, and indeed the public are still steeped in outdated, elitist notions of entitlement and eligibility to higher education. These notions are inherent in our social structures that are intensely hierarchical, almost like caste systems. Even now, in this so-called enlightened age, people are heard to say that not everyone needs to be educated, or in debates on language, that not everyone needs to learn English. These notions are also partly inherited from our colonial past. The British education system was until recent times very elitist. But even the colonialists have changed. The Dearing Report of the United Kingdom, published only 20 years ago in 1997, recognized that universities cannot hide any longer behind axioms like ‘education for its own sake’ and must take action to make higher education serve the interests of the individual and the nation.

Higher education policies in Malaysia do not give sufficient attention to this issue. Quality and standards and the reputation of universities are their main arguments to keep learners out. This must not continue. Regulators must look at new strategies to include a broader range of learners into post-secondary and higher education. And, if their skills are not adequate for higher education, to introduce measures that will bring those skills to par. Keeping people out is not a strategy to widen access nor to improve quality in education. The real measure of success of higher education institutions must be based on how they created strategies to improve access. Poverty, differentials in earning and the casting of status based on education, all social ills will be removed by broadening access. How to do this? The following policy changes will help;

Preparatory programs to bridge learners into higher education. The bridging course that played an important role in preparing those without formal entry qualification into higher education was outlawed by the Ministry of Education policies. Yet, such courses have been recognized the world over as a means to mitigate access issues;

To add to secondary education syllabus, a non-examinable preparatory course to tune students to think about education beyond the school;

Language, soft skills and Learning to Learn Courses to be run parallelly with substantive programs in colleges and universities;

Reexamination of the duration and content of part-time programs in all fields to encourage adult working employees into part-time higher education;

Permit secondary schools to conduct preparatory courses from private higher educational institutions or part of such courses in the school to mitigate the cost of travel, accommodation, etc.

Rethinking strategies for distance education that will allow universities and colleges to conduct part of their programs in the distance education mode, including in secondary schools with support of schoolteachers.

The irony is that this country is no stranger to improving access to education. It has already implemented successful strategies to improve access and equity in higher education. The special secondary schools, the Matriculation programs, the MARA colleges, and UiTM are all the products of a successful strategy to mitigate access issues. These steps are, however, not inclusive and for that reason remain ostracized from our perceptions of fairness and equity. 

None of these institutions or their underlying policies have to be sacrificed to introduce strategies of inclusiveness within the general educational institutions in the country. Both public and private sector institutions can be conscripted through encouragements and incentives to make space and create pathways to those left out of higher education. Recent strategies by public universities to recruit high fee students into normal programs and through part-time courses show that they have the capacity. What is sadly absent is a commitment from them to their most profound obligation – to improve access to those who are excluded. This must change.

Franchised Degree Programs - Pitfalls to Watch

The franchised degree is one of the most transformative concepts to have emerged in higher education. Its formulation as a legitimate mode of delivery of a university degree took place in the last decades of the 20th Century fostered by the rising demand for higher education in Asia and the problem of surplus capacity in UK and US universities. It changed the very nature of university education and the idea of the university by separating the educational program from the university offering it and making the program portable and delivered in places remote from the university. Starting with undergraduate degrees, the concept expanded to include postgraduate degrees right up to the doctoral level.

In the franchise concept, a local private college teaches the full three or four years of a degree program from a university, often a foreign one. They are described as '3+0' or '4+0' degrees to distinguish them from '2+1' or '3+1' Twinning programs. The full franchised course is delivered by the local college but the degree is awarded by the university. The university franchises the program to the local college under a written agreement that stipulates quality and other issues concerning the delivery of the program in the local college. The models of arrangement may vary from one university to another but generally, they would deal with the duration of the franchise, the selection of staff to teach the courses in the program, the required resources to teach the program and the management of student assessments are. In some arrangements, the university may also undertake to teach parts of the course in the local college assigning faculty from the university or another institution. Franchise agreements might also confer full assessment rights to the local college with supervision by the university or alternatively, the university may reserve those rights or part of those rights to itself.

Students in a franchised course are registered as students of the university and are subject to the rules and regulations of the university. Students must, therefore, pay special attention to the university's graduation requirements, its disciplinary rules and procedures. Local colleges may not explain this fact adequately to their students, relying instead on students reading the college's published regulations. The students must also note that they are at the same time bound by the college's regulations and local laws governing the conduct of students in local institutions (Private Higher Educational Institutions Act 1996). There may be conflicts and inconsistencies between the two sets of regulations and it is advisable that students are made aware of this. Ideally, a franchise agreement would deal with the duality of regulations affecting the students and make provisions in the franchise agreement to minimize or remove conflicts and inconsistencies. In any case, local laws cannot be overridden by the university's regulations or by the terms of the agreement between the college and the university.

The franchise agreement determines the mutual rights of the university and the local college. Important provisions on the duration of the franchise, the university's rights to terminate the agreement before the full term and the rights of students upon the occurrence of these events are all written into the franchise agreement. These terms have an impact on the students registered in the program but students are generally not informed of these terms. There have been instances when student rights have been seriously prejudiced by the early termination agreement of these agreements. Regrettably, there is very little in the regulatory laws of education that deal with such situations, leaving students with no alternative but to accept the solutions handed to them by the college.

Franchised programs must be approved by the Ministry of Education through the same procedures that apply to other programs delivered through a private higher educational institution. The admission requirements for the program will be determined when the program is approved by the Ministry of Education. Other conditions may also be imposed in order to make the franchised program conform to local regulations. The franchised program is also subject to all the quality assurance provisions under Malaysian laws. Typically, approval is only given if the program meets the standards for Provisional Accreditation as determined by the Malaysian Qualifications Agency or MQA.

The innovations in the franchise concept contributed significantly to the development of higher education in this country. It raised the status of private colleges to degree-teaching institutions and raised the status of teachers to university lecturers. Its continued presence adds a valuable dimension to Malaysian higher education by enhancing its international character. In this role, it stands at the same level as the foreign branch campuses that operate in this country

Reform and its Proponents

The New Government's promise to reform education took off in earnest this year with a flurry of activities centered around a number of committees that were formed to look into this and that in education. In higher education, the focus appears to be on the harmonization of the public and private sectors of higher education. The plurality of views on this issue come from different directions. From the top, the proposals are about autonomy, academic freedom and the freeing of universities from government control. From the other end, the concerns are more pedestrian, more practical, if you like. Issues like teaching permit, the speeding of bureaucratic processes and lesser control of the academic processes have been raised by representatives of the private sector. Surprisingly, I have not heard of any discussions on the harmonization of language policies across the sectors.

The opinions and 'findings' so far published only tinker with the issues. Any real proposal to harmonize the two sectors must examine the reasons for the division of the higher education sector and more importantly the root policies that forced that division. There is a serious misunderstanding underlying current discussions which is that the private sector was created by and for the well-to-do in our society and has no place for the poor. This is an inaccurate way to describe the origins of the private sector which evolved to meet the needs of a large section of our population that could not find its way into public sector institutions.

The main issue in higher education, which has always been controversial and constituted a large chunk of the political fodder for the racial polemics of this country is ACCESS to higher education. Any move towards harmonization must first deal with that very, very important issue. With over 800 post-school institutions in the country, we can no longer hide behind capacity issues. A fair and progressive approach to providing educational opportunities to all will ensure harmonization. Without a fair policy on access, nothing will really be harmonized, let alone reformed.