Malaysia's Ministry of Higher Education has Announced a Major Overhaul of Tertiary Education From 2006 Through 2010. December 25, 2005.
    Malaysia's Higher Learning Management Department director-general Datuk Dr Hassan told the Malaysian National News Service  Bernama last week, "We want to start [a major overhaul of Malaysia's tertiary education sector] as soon as possible. The impact must be felt by the end of the Ninth Malaysia Plan (NMP)."

Dr Hassan went on to to say that the ministry hopes to bring the lecturer-student ratio at the 17 government universities (an 18^th is to be opened next year) down from 1/20 to 1/16, increase the number of 17- to 23-year-olds in higher education from the current ~30% to 40%, and raise the number of foreign students from about 40,000 to 100,000 by 2010.

Bernama reports the "education revolution" is expected to focus on seven areas.:

1. a new governance system, including a financial mechanism, to make sure that public universities can perform competitively while remaining accountable to the government;

2.  the ministry wants to improve accessibility so that more students can enrol for higher education, including people from rural areas and poor families;

3. the ministry wants to increase the number of students in higher education from about 600,000 now to 1.6 million by 2010;

4. while raising enrolment, the ministry wants to ensure quality teaching and learning. "Otherwise," Dr Hassan said, "we are not producing the right future manpower of the nation because there will be more unemployed graduates and people who cannot fit the working environment";

5. the ministry wants to strengthen research and development. According to Dr Hassan, "We feel the need to improve in publications, with more post-graduate students creating a research culture";

6. the ministry wants to increase the capability of lecturers. For example, only 30% of lecturers now hold PhDs and this is expected to be increased to about 75%;

7. the ministry wants to internationalise tertiary institutions.

Noting that the global higher education market is worth an estimated US$2.5 trillion, Dr Hassan said Malaysia hoped to increase its current very small share.

Just where the Australian government is steering its tertiary education sector to position itself usefully to serve the nation in maintaining its position within its cohort, let alone improve it, is anything but clear. It won't be that many years before the income obtained from overseas students will come under severe competition and as matters stand the distortion of university curricula that vying for the overseas student will have an increasing impact on both our workforce and the nation's culture.