Timely boost: Prof Noor Azuan speaking at Parliament after the tabling of Budget 2026.
Universiti Malaya (UM) will engage with the relevant ministries and agencies, including with Parliamentarians, to ensure effective and sustainable implementation and monitoring mechanisms for allocations announced in Budget 2026.
Its vice-chancellor Prof Datuk Seri Dr Noor Azuan Abu Osman said the varsity has been awarded key support in two core areas - student residence and health advancement in the form of Health Metropolis.
UM, he added, will embark on discussions and strategic planning with stakeholders to turn the allocations into outcomes, partnerships into results, and aspirations into sustained national transformation.
“The challenge now lies in the execution.
“This Budget could make UM not only the custodian of knowledge, but also the heart of Malaysia’s humane and future-ready society, and we are ready to be at the forefront to fully implement the facets of strategic returns to the university and the nation,” he said in a Facebook post on Oct 12.
Budget 2026, he said, carries particular importance for Malaysia’s universities, ageing preparedness, and institutional collaboration between government, academia, and national funds such as Employees Provident Fund (EPF).
Within this framework, UM emerges as a key national anchor, featured directly in two strategic initiatives - and symbolically positioned at the intersection of youth development and an ageing nation.
“For the first time, the Budget explicitly introduces a UM–EPF collaboration. This marks the beginning of a public–GLIC partnership in student housing, responding to the acute shortage of affordable on-campus accommodation.
“The initiative carries broader implications - it establishes a precedent for asset co-development between universities and state-linked investors, leveraging EPF’s financing capacity and UM’s land and development rights,” he said, adding that the project goes beyond physical expansion, signifying a new governance model for campus infrastructure that blends fiscal prudence with social responsibility.
He said the partnership could later extend to staff housing, elderly-friendly accommodation for lifelong learners, or mixed-use precincts integrating research, residence, and care facilities.
“We will seek the maximum returns for our campus community through the 1,000 units of residence.
“We will continue to discuss with the EPF, and Finance and Higher Education Ministries, to get up to 40,000 places for our campus community to address our shortage of residence and accommodation for our students,” he said.
The UM Health Metropolis received a huge boost, integrating education, research, and public health, in the Budget.
The UM Health Metropolis will link the University of Malaya Medical Centre (PPUM) with private hospitals, biotech firms, and digital-health start-ups, creating an ecosystem where medical education, R&D, clinical trials, and community services converge.
It also complements the Budget’s allowance for public university teaching hospitals to establish endowment funds, with tax exemptions on donations and investment income—opening new, sustainable funding channels for PPUM.
Together, these measures place UM at the forefront of public–private health innovation, directly aligning with Malaysia’s demographic shift toward an ageing society, Prof Noor Azuan said.
“This is geared towards placing UM at the forefront of advanced healthcare and health services, integrating systemic and structural key aspects of research, services and academic outcome in the health sector for the direct impact and benefit to the people and the community, especially in KL and Selangor,” he said, adding that the ageing transition is not merely a demographic statistic; it is a new frontier for higher education.
The Budget’s higher-education and ageing provisions are two sides of the same coin, he noted. One invests in young minds; the other safeguards dignity in later life.
As Malaysia’s oldest university, UM stands symbolically between these generations, he said.
“Its campuses house the nation’s youth today and, through its hospitals and research centres, will serve its elderly tomorrow.
“From student housing to health ecosystems, and from EPF-backed social finance to the design of senior-care models, the opportunities for UM and other universities are immense,” he said, adding that Budget 2026 redefines the role of universities beyond teaching, to include social innovation, inclusion, and nation-building.
