The Impact of the Economic Crisis on Higher Education in Malaysia

Abstract

26 conditions and funding formulae that offer almost insuperable barriers to lower-ranked institutions emulating the higher ranked, while offering no alternative models for them to focus on. Our elite institutions continue to rank well in international comparisons and cast a rosy glow over the system as a whole, but we have given too little attention to where our nonelite institutions stand and what steps we should be taking to differentiate their mission. No government has been able to pay fully for the transition from elite to mass and from mass to near universal higher education, so that for quality not to fall institutions are going to have to generate an increasing amount of resource either from students or from other private sources. No government has been able to pay fully for the transition from elite to mass and from mass to near universal higher education, so that for quality not to fall institutions are going to have to generate an increasing amount of resource either from students or from other private sources. In Britain the historic inhibitions about doing this are far less than in continental Europe but much greater than in the United States. There exists therefore the opportunity for British universities to enhance their position by entrepreneurial activities, and by further diversifying their funding base, and it is evident that many are doing so to considerable effect, though certainly not yet on anything like the scale one can find in the United States. But the growth of private universities in Germany and the Iberian peninsula suggests that the dam is breaking in European countries. The British mixed-economy university, part state and part privately funded, remains the sanest model if the components can be got right. But, if we continue to fund universities so poorly, those not perceived to be in the successful elite will find it increasingly difficult to be other than solely dependent on state funding and student fees, which will lock them into an absolute strait-jacket of state control. The effect will be to widen the gap between the most and the least successful universities ; this in the longer term is bound to weaken the system as a whole. This article is reprinted, with permission, from the Times Higher Education Supplement.