Universities will be free from political meddling: Maszlee

PUTRAJAYA: Academic institutions will not be used for any political or government interests, said Education Minister Maszlee Malik.
He said all higher learning institutions will be given more autonomy to encourage them to progress in line with international standards.

"We will make sure that the Pakatan Harapan government will never misuse the universities for its political interest.
"I will make sure that I will not abuse the universities for my political interest, my party's political interest or the ruling party's political interests," Maszlee told a press conference after announcing the QS World University Ranking here today.
Reiterating that this is also part of PH's promise, he said there should be completely open intellectual debates without the culture of fear in the universities.
"We will not control that. We will not dictate to them and we will not force them. We want all universities to enjoy their autonomy and to cultivate academic freedom," Maszlee said.
In announcing the world university ranking conducted by Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) for 2018, he said Universiti Malaya (UM)'s ranking among the top 100 universities in the world is an "impressive improvement".
Maszlee said the QS evaluation is based on academic reputation (40%), employer reputation (10%), faculty students ratio (20%), international faculty ratio (5%), international students ratio (5%), citation per faculty (20%).
According to the rankings released earlier today, UM now ranks 87th in the world from 114th last year.
Meanwhile, he said the Malaysian Education Quality Standard audit series will be stopped immediately.
Stressing that although the audit was for education transformation in line with global standards, he said it has caused confusion and anxiety among teachers.
"I want the teachers' workload to be reduced so that they can give focus to educate the students.
"In relation to this, I have decided to stop this audit series which is carried out by the Inspectorate and Quality Assurance Council with immediate effect," Maszlee said.
However he said that the council will continue its training sessions where needed.
It was reported that the audit carried out by the council caused confusion among school authorities as they were unclear about the documents which had to be audited.