For decades, higher education reform has been confined to symbolic autonomy, managerial reshuffling and aspirational slogans, while the deeper structures that constrain academic freedom and student agency remain largely untouched,says the writer. — Bernama
MALAYSIA’S new Higher Education Plan will ultimately be judged not by the ambition of its language, but by the depth of its reforms.
For decades, higher education reform has been confined to symbolic autonomy, managerial reshuffling and aspirational slogans, while the deeper structures that constrain academic freedom and student agency remain largely untouched. If the plan is to be more than another administrative exercise, structural reform must be its starting point.
Academic freedom rarely disappears through open repression. It erodes gradually under governance systems that centralise power, discourage dissent and normalise compliance. In Malaysia, this erosion is systemic.
Universities continue to operate under executive-dominated governance models that weaken collegial decision-making and insulate authority from internal accountability. The consequence is a culture of risk aversion that undermines the university’s role as a critical institution in society.
This diagnosis is not new. During my tenure as education minister, several reform efforts were initiated to address these structural weaknesses: recalibrating the balance of power between vice-chancellors, senates and boards; reducing excessive ministerial control; and widening space for student self-governance.
These initiatives, however, remained vulnerable because they were not anchored in law. The lesson is clear: without institutional guarantees, academic freedom depends on personalities rather than principles.
The governance framework of Universiti Teknologi Mara (UiTM) illustrates the problem clearly. The UiTM Act concentrates extraordinary authority in the office of the vice-chancellor, spanning academic, administrative and disciplinary domains with limited internal counterweights. This is increasingly out of step with global governance norms, where strong senates and independent boards serve as safeguards against executive overreach.
Revising the UiTM Act is therefore not about destabilising the institution, but about modernising it. Proposals discussed in 2019 to restore the senate as the highest academic authority and to limit unilateral executive discretion remain relevant today. Leadership is strengthened, not weakened, when it operates within a system of shared governance and transparent accountability.
Revising the UiTM Act is not about destabilising the institution but about modernising it. — SYAQUERA RAWING / The Star.
The same structural imbalance affects student participation. Malaysian universities continue to treat students primarily as subjects of regulation rather than stakeholders with rights. Student representation is often consultative and conditional, while disciplinary frameworks remain expansive and punitive. This contradiction undermines the very claim that universities exist to nurture critical and responsible citizens.
Between 2018 and 2019, the Education Ministry took steps to liberalise student activities and explore the legal recognition of autonomous student unions.
These efforts demonstrated that students, when trusted, are capable of responsible self-organisation. What was lacking was not student readiness, but legal certainty.
The new Higher Education Plan must therefore, move decisively towards recognising independent student unions as permanent features of university governance, with guaranteed representation in senates, boards and key decision-making bodies.
This becomes even more urgent in light of proposals to place Form Six colleges and matriculation programmes under the Higher Education Ministry. Extending higher education governance downward without reforming its underlying philosophy risks entrenching authoritarian practices at an earlier stage of intellectual development. Academic freedom cannot flourish if students are socialised into compliance before they even enter university.
Revising the Universities and University Colleges Act (AUKU) must also go hand in hand with Act 555 which governs private higher education institutions.
Fragmented legal regimes produce uneven standards of freedom and accountability. Academic freedom cannot be selective; it must be systemic. Aligning these laws is not merely technical but normative; a declaration that freedom of thought is a national educational value rather than a discretionary privilege.
Concerns that structural reform will undermine order are misplaced. Order sustained through control breeds apathy; order grounded in participation cultivates responsibility. The limited reform experiments of recent years, though incomplete, showed that universities do not descend into chaos when academics and students are trusted, they mature.
Malaysia does not need another higher education plan that rearranges administrative structures while preserving old assumptions. It needs a reform agenda that completes unfinished work: rebalancing governance, revising outdated legislation, and institutionalising student participation. These are not radical demands. They are the minimum conditions for restoring the ethical and intellectual foundations of the university.
By the numbers, the case for reform is compelling. Malaysia today has 20 public universities, more than 430 private higher education institutions and approximately 1.3 million students, with nearly 70% enrolled in public institutions governed primarily under AUKU.
Yet, governance authority in most public universities remains highly centralised. Vice-chancellors retain decisive control over academic administration, student discipline and internal governance, while senates often function as advisory bodies rather than autonomous academic authorities.
Student participation is similarly constrained. While student representative councils exist across public universities, fewer than 10% operate with meaningful financial or administrative autonomy. Most remain subject to extensive oversight, with disciplinary provisions allowing suspension or dissolution under broad executive discretion. This contrasts sharply with international norms, where student unions are legally recognised entities embedded within institutional governance.
During the 2018–2019 reform period, policy shifts signalled an alternative path. These included the liberalisation of student political activities, the scaling back of punitive disciplinary approaches and early work towards recognising autonomous student unions.
As articulated at the time, “universities must be places where students learn democracy by practising it, not by memorising it.” The experiments that followed showed that disorder did not increase when students were trusted; engagement did.
Similarly, academic governance reform was guided by a simple principle articulated in policy dialogues with university leaders: “Academic freedom cannot depend on who holds office; it must be protected by the structure of the institution itself.” This principle remains unfulfilled, not because it is flawed, but because it was never fully institutionalised.
International evidence reinforces this direction. Comparative studies by Unesco and the OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) consistently show that universities with shared governance, independent academic senates and formal student representation perform better on indicators of institutional trust, academic integrity and civic engagement.
Malaysia’s challenge, therefore, is not conceptual. It is political.
Academic freedom is neither a luxury to be granted when convenient, nor a risk to be managed through control. It is the operating system of a serious university. The question facing Malaysia is simple: will the new Higher Education Plan entrench old habits with new language, or finally redesign the system to trust its academics and students?
Plans expire. Institutions endure. The choice made now will define not just the next decade of higher education, but the intellectual character of the nation itself.
Prof Dr Maszlee Malik was Education Minister from 2018 to 2020 and is now chairman of the International Institute of Advanced Islamic Studies (IAIS) Malaysia. The views expressed here are solely the writer's own.
