100 Mukherjee, Singh, Fernandez-Chung and Marimuthu
a large proportion of whom hold PhDs and tend to be in the HEIs with
larger enrolments (MOE 2013). Public universities can recruit up to 10 per
cent international staff with salary packages restricted by government
regulations. Private HEIs have no restrictions regarding the proportion to
be recruited or salary packages: clearly, the financially stronger can offer
more attractive packages and attract better qualified staff.
Quality of HEIs and Measures of Performance
Quality of institutions may be measured by several proxies: academic staff
qualifications, national and international rankings, and publications in top-
tier indexed research journals, citations and patents. Probably the acid test
of quality is that of graduate employment, bearing witness to the value
of acquired learning and work-related skills to society and the economy.
Key Performance Indicators have been introduced in public HEIs which
provide measures for teaching, research and publications, level of external
funding for research, patenting, and community service. These are taken
into account for staff appraisal and promotion purposes.
National Rating of HEIs
Annual national mechanisms for rating public and private higher education
institutions are found in two instruments developed by the Malaysian
Qualifications Agency: Rating System for Higher Education Institutions
(or SETARA, its acronym in the national language) for universities and
university colleges; and MyQuest (Malaysian Quality Evaluation System
for Private Colleges) for colleges. Polytechnics and community colleges
have internal quality assurance mechanisms.
SETARA, a quality assurance tool, measures the quality of teaching and
learning at the undergraduate level looking at three generic dimensions
of: input (talent, resources and governance); process (curriculum matters);
and output (quality of graduates as measured by data from tracer studies
and employer perception surveys). The resultant six-tier rating system
ranges from Tier 6 identified as “Outstanding” and Tier 1 as “Weak” based
on institutional scores. By 2012, results showed that out of the fifty-two
public and private universities and university colleges rated, thirty-five
(67 per cent) of the fifty-four institutions achieved a Tier 5 “excellent”
category; sixteen (14 per cent) institutions in Tier 4 as “very good”, and