More Malaysians Expected To Attend Western Michigan University

By Manik Mehta NEW YORK, June 11 (Bernama) -- Malaysia is expected to be among the top sources for international students at the Western Michigan University (WMU) in Kalamazoo in 2012/13. Keith Hearit, the vice provost for enrolment at the WMU, said that the trend of Malaysia providing a large number of students will also continue in the 2012/13 year. The WMU predicts that the number of Malaysian students will rise after the signing of what is called an articulation agreement with institutions in Malaysia. The WMU President, John M. Dunn, is planning a visit to Malaysia this month to celebrate the 25th anniversary of a partnership with a private college that brought hundreds of Malaysian students to the WMU. During his trip, Dunn plans to sign several articulation agreements with other private Malaysian universities. Dunn may also visit the Kalamazoo Cafe in Kuala Lumpur, which opened in 2010 and was started by four WMU alumni. Shortly after opening in 1987, the Sunway College near Kuala Lumpur partnered with WMU to launch a "twinning programme", with a WMU faculty member assigned at the Sunway College site to teach Malaysian students during their first two years before they arrived at WMU to complete the remaining two years of their course of study for a bachelor's degree programme. WMU officials claimed that the programme has helped Malaysia emerge as a "Southeast Asia regional centre for education". According to information from the WMU, by 2011, Sunway College had become a bachelor's degree awarding university. The twinning plan created by WMU transitioned into general articulation agreements, providing opportunities to study abroad, faculty exchanges and research initiatives. WMU faculty member, Finance Professor Christopher Korth, is currently completing a three-month teaching programme at Sunway. "Our long and very strong relationship with Sunway and the impact it has had on global higher education is a source of great pride for Western Michigan University," said Dunn in a statement. "Our connections to Malaysia go back to the late 1960s and 1970s, when large numbers of Malaysian government scholarship students were enrolled at WMU ... we now have an alumni community in Malaysia of about 2,500 strong. "We'll be celebrating this wonderful occasion with two major alumni gatherings and a series of meetings with our colleagues in Malaysia who made this relationship a reality." Under the Sunway programme, 93 Malaysian students enrolled themselves at the WMU last autumn. WMU representatives told Bernama that the so-called "2+2" model formed the basis of educating thousands of Malaysian students at more than 60 colleges and universities in the United States, besides following such a modality for pursuing courses at universities in the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand. The twinning programme offered a way out for Malaysian students in the mid 1980s when Malaysia found it difficult to cope with providing enough number of seats to Malaysian students at six of its universities, and offered them scholarships to study abroad. The Malaysian government sought the cooperation of the private sector to create private colleges to help students get degrees without having to pay exorbitant fees. Reacting to this call, Jeffrey Cheah, the president of the SungeiWay Group, a conglomerate involved in the construction and real estate business, struck a partnership with the WMU, initiating what came to be known as the "2+2 programme" whose objective was to provide not only a decent higher education for Malaysian students but at fees that were affordable. WMU sources maintain that this resulted in a net saving of some 40 per cent of what one would have to pay for a four-year course of study at an overseas university. Sunway College advanced to become Malaysia's biggest private college, with its students making the WMU the leading destination for a course of higher studies. Sunway College's growth has upgraded it to Sunway University which today awards its own bachelor's degrees. The SungeiWay Group's founder, Jeffrey Cheah, who is sometimes affectionately called "Malaysia's Andrew Carnegie", was conferred an honorary doctorate from the WMU in 1994 for his deep commitment to promoting higher education in Malaysia, according to WMU sources. WMU points out that some of its former students occupy today leading positions in the industry, government, academics and other professions. Prof Dr Mohd Tajudin Ninggal is among the former WMU students who hold top positions in the field of academics. Besides being the deputy vice-chancellor (student affairs and alumni) at Universiti of Technology, Malaysia UTM) in Skudai, Johor Baharu, Mohd Tajudin is a professor of counselling psychology at the university. The WMU has also established similar twinning programmes in Hong Kong, Indonesia, India, Pakistan, Bolivia and Kenya. -- BERNAMA