Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia: Headstart in journalism

Now Chief Content Officer for Star Media Group, Esther Ng (right) studied journalism at UKM with VP Sujata (StarMetro news editor), and they have been colleagues for over two decades.

When I was offered a place in UKM, I was ecstatic! Just a week before, I had an offer to be a flight attendant. It took me all of three seconds to choose UKM. It was the late 1980s. I was 20, I had just received my STPM results, and I was eager to do something with it.

Gaining a place at a public university was a big deal – there were all of five institutions to vie for then and almost no private universities to serve as a safety net. All the hard work for STPM hinged on an impossibly lean chance.