104 Mukherjee, Singh, Fernandez-Chung and Marimuthu
The government has established schemes such as TalentCorp to
attract qualified overseas Malaysians. A World Bank study (World Bank
2011 b) on brain drain in Malaysia cited (1) poor career prospects, (2) social
injustice, and (3) low wages. Instead of creating market distortions by
direct intervention, the government would do well to collaborate with the
business sector to increase productivity, allowing market forces to handle
career prospects and wage differentials (Lim , Krishnan and Yap 2014, p. 22).
More intractable to deal with is emigrants’ perception of social injustice.
Quality, Internationalization, and Employability
The internationalization agenda as charted by the MOE is largely propelled
today by the concept of education as an export commodity, visible in the
growth of transnational education (TNE) enrolment largely within the
private HE sector and increasingly the public sector. It includes branch
campuses and numerous forms of collaborations usually in the form of
franchise, joint degree and twinning arrangements. Currently, the nine
international branch campuses together with local private HEIs attract
close to a third of foreign students studying for a degree in the country
although data tend to be incomplete. The plan is to increase the current
91,000 students to 200,000 by 2020 (MOE announcement, 25 September
2014).
The presence of international programmes and providers contributes to
the overall quality of the higher education sector. Foreign HEIs, particularly
those of high repute, have introduced effective ways of providing quality
higher education in Malaysia with brand status. They provide choices to
students and parents, and allow for the market to set acceptable benchmarks
on quality. Shorter term quality achievements come through sharing of best
practices between foreign and local partners. Policymakers and industry
players are aware that the larger and more established private HEIs had
built their processes and best practices on the processes and practices of
their parent universities.
The presence of TNE providers has influenced graduate employability
patterns. A recent study (Fernandez-Chung et al. 2014) of employers
shows that next to foreign graduates, TNE graduates from foreign branch
campuses are the most sought-after employees. This was followed by
graduates from local private universities, private colleges, private university
colleges and finally local public universities (see Figure 4.4).