Impact of the Government Funding Reforms on the Teaching and Learning of Malaysian Public Universities

Abstract

<p>The Malaysian Government intention to implement the higher education reforms is observable in the implementation of National Higher Education Strategic Plan beyond 2020 in 2007. This plan emphasises on improving the research and teaching in higher education in accordance with the government objectives. Parallel to the introduction of this plan, the government has also initiated the funding reforms which are currently implemented on the public universities. Therefore, this paper will discuss the impact of Malaysian higher education reforms with emphasis on teaching and learning in Malaysian public universities.</p

Funding Trends of Research Universities in Malaysia

“…A study carried out by Ahmad & Farley (2013) has found that the funding reforms introduced in the RU in Malaysia have enabled the universities to enhance their quality of education and research. Apart from that the Malaysian government has also planned to introduce the Performance-Based Funding (PBF) mechanism to the universities.…”

“…For government funding to RU in the year 2011, the UKM was allocated the highest amount of funds (RM 1,138,195,000), followed by USM (RM 983,700,000), UM (RM 755,679,102), UPM (RM 713,416,139) and UTM (RM 563,944,778). Ahmad & Farley (2013) claimed that the government funds have become the major source of income for the public and research universities in Malaysia apart from those contributed by the student fees. For the universities in Europe, the government funds represent an average of nearly three quarters of the universities' total income (Eastermann &Pruvot, 2011 andDominicis, Pérez, &Fernández-Zubieta, 2011).…”

The Study of Government-university Relationship in Malaysian Higher Education System

“…Changes in educational systems have led many countries to restructure their resources to finance higher education and to ensure it aligns with overall government objectives (Ahmad, Farley, & Naidoo, 2012b;Johnstone, 1998), in order to compete in the competitive global environment. As a result, almost all countries today rely on large scale government funding to improve the quality of higher education (Roger, 1995).…”

Utilization of Higher Education Budget: Study on Public Universities in Bangladesh

“…A candidate has graduation and post graduation degrees or only graduation from any discipline of a university is eligible to apply. 2 Academicians include researchers and faculties of public universities. Total number of faculties in public universities were 9,962 (excluding part-time faculties) in 2011 (UGC, 2011, p.128).…”