MANJUNG, April 27 — Local universities are free to determine their own courses, says Higher Education Minister Datuk Seri Zambry Abd Kadir.
Zambry said universities have been granted autonomy, with the Malaysian Qualifications Agency (MQA) only tasked with ensuring that any course offered meets the established standards.
“I have not been informed that all public or private universities must follow the mould set by the Higher Education Ministry (KPT) or the Malaysian Qualifications Agency (MQA). It is not the role of MQA to decide whether a course can be offered.
“MQA is only responsible for ensuring that any course to be offered by a university meets the required quality and standards, but it is not the final decision-maker,” he said.
He said this after officiating the closing ceremony of Universiti Teknologi Malaysia’s (UTM) TechnoXplorer 2025 programme at SMK Ahmad Boestamam here today.
Earlier, former higher education deputy minister Datuk Seri Saifuddin Abdullah had called for public universities to be given greater autonomy and for bureaucratic barriers to be reduced to enable Malaysia’s higher education institutions to thrive.
Saifuddin reportedly said that while the MQA played an important role in maintaining academic standards and course accreditation, the agency’s slow processes and bureaucratic red tape had caused the country’s academic sector to lag globally.
Meanwhile, Zambry said there was no issue of universities not being given autonomy as alleged, because it was the universities themselves that determined their courses before submitting them to the MQA.
“Each course must be discussed at the MQA level for approval because quality control is important. However, MQA only acts as a guide for universities to ensure that new courses offered are not hastily or poorly developed,” he said.
He added that regulatory oversight regarding implementation and curriculum was a normal process to ensure that public universities remain important institutions for educating Malaysians at the highest level. — Bernama