http://www.themalaysianinsider.com/...nd-iskandars-education-hub-less-than-stellar/
NUSAJAYA, Dec 24 – Foreign education institutions appeared to face numerous hurdles while setting up shop in Johor’s new township here, the New York Times reported yesterday.
The institutions are part of EduCity, a 242.81-hectare education hub developed by Iskandar Investment Berhad, a company jointly owned by the government’s investment arm Khazanah Nasional Berhad, the Employees Provident Fund (EPF) and Johor-owned Kumpulan Prasarana Rakyat Johor Berhad (KPRJ).
Representatives of Newcastle University Medicine Malaysia (NUMed) and Raffles University Iskandar (RUI) cited lack of bureaucratic independence, curriculum clash, and Johor’s relative unattractiveness to Singapore as some of the problems that they face.
“The one big risk is whether you can adapt your proven model in one jurisdiction to another where there are fundamental differences,” NUMed’s provost Professor Reginald Jordan told New York Times.
Jordan highlighted that changes to entrance qualifications or fees must be approved by the Ministry of Higher Education, whereas the matters would be dealt with internally back in England.
“I find that exceptionally frustrating,” he added.
He gave the example Singapore’s short-lived University of New South Wales (UNSW) campus, which closed after only a semester in 2007, as an example of failure in adapting.
His frustration was shared by Professor Malek Pourzanjani, the president of RUI, one of the many schools in a chain run by Raffles Education, a company from across the Causeway.
According to Pourzanjani, he could not appoint staff members from affiliated schools as anything more than guest lecturers if no approval from the government was obtained.
So far, ten renowned education institutions have been approached to open their branches in EduCity, including secondary schools Marlborough College Malaysia, and Raffles American School, another of Raffles Education’s project.
Marlborough is an international boarding school owned by an elite private school with the same name in the UK, which boasts alumni such as the Duchess of Cambridge Kate Middleton and poet Siegfried Sassoon.
The rest are tertiary institutions, including RUI; British academies NUMed, the University of Southampton and the University of Reading; Netherlands Maritime Institute of Technology; the Management Development Institute of Singapore; the Johann Cruyff Institute for Sports Studies, a sports management school initiated by the Dutch football star; and a joint-venture between Multimedia University (MMU) and the University of Southern California.
Most of the universities however, will only have one faculty or department each: NUMed will concentrate only on medicine, Southampton on engineering, and Reading on English language courses.
Jordan explained that the unusual model allowed their programmes to bet set up at a lower cost, but as a result not every campus offer equivalent degrees and transferable credits with their parent campus.
For example, because of British and EU quotas on foreign medical students, the 250 NUMed students can not transfer between other Newcastle campuses.
Despite offering itself as a cheaper alternative in obtaining education from prestigious academies, EduCity is finding it hard to attract prospective students and staff from Singapore and even Kuala Lumpur, with most students coming from the state itself.
“There’s a negative perception to Johor, and changing perceptions takes time and hard work,” Pourzanjani said, noting that despite receiving approval to enrol overseas students, the 30 students of RUI are all Malaysians.
Jordan had also been less than positive about the delays in construction, with NUMed’s sports complex and student housing areas still not completed by November, despite a promise to the contrary.
In addition to the education institutions, EduCity will also include a student village, which will house 16,000 students, and a 12,000-seat sports complex.
Only Marlborough and NUMed have begun their operations full-time, while the rest of the institutions are expected to do so by 2017.
Malaysia has offered numerous incentives to attract foreign institutions and professionals, including a 15 per cent flat income tax rate for “knowledge workers” who matches the government’s criteria.
The institutions operating in EduCity also received preferential tax treatment from the government and possible financial assistance.
According to Iskandar Regional Development Authority, the institutions could be owned by their foreign parent schools entirely, instead of requiring a Malaysian partner if they operate elsewhere in the country.
In its editorial last week, the Straits Times said that Malaysia’s southern economic corridor project in Johor, which once had naysayers doubting its success, is proof that growth in the region can be a co-operative instead of competitive initiative.
“In a win-win fashion, political will and economic imperative have combined to start making the Iskandar Malaysia project another tangible and promising demonstration of co-operation between Singapore and Malaysia,” the widely-read paper said.
Iskandar Malaysia, which covers 2,217 square km and is thrice the size of Singapore, was launched six years ago, but got its real boost two years back following Malaysia and Singapore’s peaceful resolution over a two-decades long railway land dispute.