Higher Education in Malaysia 85
Data disaggregated by ethnicity for intake, enrolment, graduands
and award of scholarships are not available in the public domain. Ethnic
data, considered sensitive, have not been published since 1985 in the
five-year Malaysia Development Plans confounding efforts to analyse the
advancement of equity in access to higher education. Data for this area
have to be gleaned from sources such as an occasional announcement in
Parliament or data from political parties. In many instances researchers
are left with using proxy data arising from sources such as the Labour
Force Surveys which record employment of graduates and attainment of
highest qualifications by ethnicity.
HIGHER EDUCATION POLICY FRAMEWORK
The 1969 civil unrest in Malaysia, partly the result of dissatisfaction
among the Malays with their progress in the education and economic
sectors, brought about sweeping policy changes. It saw the launch of the
New Economic Policy (NEP) which was designed to achieve in twenty
years a more equitable society through the eradication of poverty and
the restructuring of social divisions thereby eliminating the identification
of economic participation with ethnicity (Malaysia 1971). Education was
identified as the instrument to reduce the gaps in opportunities and
expand access to all levels of education particularly for the Malays and
other indigenous people, referred to as Bumiputras, who were educationally
disadvantaged, compared to other ethnic groups.
Affirmative action policies followed to ensure greater access to
education and employment. These included preferential mechanisms such
as an ethnic-based university admissions quota, provision of scholarships
held in local and foreign universities, Malay-only residential colleges, junior
science colleges, training programmes, the establishment of the Yayasan
MARA (MARA Foundation) and Universiti Teknologi MARA (UiTM).
It should be noted that some government support also had been made
available to two community-based HEIs, one Chinese and the other Indian.
The National University of Malaysia (Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia or
UKM) was established to promote the use of the national language, and
four more universities were established in the 1970s to meet the demand
for higher education. Malaysia’s affirmative action and redistributive
policies were widely seen as successful in reducing poverty and creating
a prosperous, multiethnic society in the 1980s and 1990s while building a