249The new Malaysian Education Blueprint- Higher Education (2015-2025)
MEB-HE (2015-2025), launched in April 2015, put forward another fundamental
transformation for the higher education system and higher learning institutions in
terms of access, quality, equity, unity and efficiency. It has been postulated that with
this latest reform, studies in higher education may not be as popular as they have
been as no prescriptive strategies are needed at the central level. However, we argue
that it is both necessary and possible, based on the achievements in the previous era,
to consolidate and deepen higher education research in a planned manner. Both
reform and development need theories and best practices for guidance and evalua-
tion. From a long-term perspective, the prospects for higher education research in
Malaysia are still bright.
To ensure that higher education thrives and succeeds in establishing itself as a
discipline in its own right, its roots need to spread and be strengthened by develop-
ing graduate programmes, growing expertise in theoretical research and disseminat-
ing knowledge via publications, while cultivating a community of practice that will
sustain and continue developing the discipline. The following subsections will dis-
cuss critically each of these aspects and point out what needs to be done to further
establish higher education as a field of study.
Graduate Programmes in Higher Education
The foundation of any academic discipline or profession begins with a set of core
beliefs and practices (Dill and Morrison 1985 ; Sadlak and Altbach 1997 ). Once
adopted, those core principles provide the source from which the group transfers
knowledge to its members. Hence, as the study of higher education evolves into an
academic area of scholarship, certain taught and research courses and programmes
should be developed by educators to provide some form of cohesion to the higher
education discipline (Altbach 1997 ; Jones 2012 ).
The creation of graduate programmes of study in higher education, particularly
at the doctoral level, represents a major step in the direction of developing the
needed understanding and expertise (World Bank 1994 ; Altbach 1997 , 2002 ; Jones
2012 ; Kehm 2015 ). Unfortunately, the growth of higher education research oppor-
tunities in Malaysia has not spurred the growth of higher education graduate pro-
grammes that would have led to opening up the field of higher education studies.
There is hardly any master’s programme that provides an opportunity to study the
complexity of higher education in terms of how it impacts, and is shaped by, the
social, political and economic environment. Clearly, in Malaysia, professional
development of higher education policy, leadership and management capacity as
well as academic interest in higher education has been largely absent or, at best,
fragmented. There is no tradition of and subsequently no structure for educating and
training higher education policymakers and leaders/managers, or for studying
higher education. Even in top selected education faculties, training and research in
higher education is fragmented, with a number of small units and programmes
14 Higher Education as a Field of Study in Malaysia: Towards an Epistemic...