PENANG, 8 April 2016 - Malaysia is fast becoming a higher education hub in the Asian region and this is in line with our aspiration to attract more international students to come to Malaysia.

According to the Director of International Relations Centre Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (IRCUKM), Assoc. Prof. Dr. Yazrina Yahya, short-term mobility or short-term programmes is a very good platform for students to experience living and studying in a certain place for a short period of time.

“During the short-term mobility, students are required to do some field trip, community engagement, experience the culture and knowledge sharing. Students learn how to adapt to the culture in certain places throughout the programme,” said Yazrina.

She said, “most of the institutions, no matter schools or universities, provide various types of short term programmes. However, the administrative structure in universities has become the main challenge to sustain the programmes, usually after a period of five years, because administrative heads will keep on changing and along with it comes different views.”

“To sustain the programmes, universities need to strategise. Universities can co-operate with the same partner every year, but at the same time, they have to look for new partner whom they can trust, who is willing to do reciprocal exchange and know the value of the particular university,” added Yazrina.

She said that this is where networking plays an important role to forge global partnership in order to attract more international students to come to Malaysia and hence promoting internalisation.

Added Yazrina further, short term mobility or programmes is actually a very good platform for students to have a bigger picture of certain places and would be a good starting point for them to be exposed to the new place before they are bold enough to embark on a long journey to study in a foreign land.

“Therefore universities have to draw up interesting sustainable programmes that are able to attract these international students to study here. At the same time, the international community would also be attracted to come to Malaysia and probably pursue their studies here in the future,” she said.

Yazrina presented the findings of her paper entitled “Promoting Internationalisation through the Development of Sustainable Programmes via Global Partnerships” on the second day of the Global Higher Education Forum 2016 (GHEF 2016) held at a hotel here recently.

Text: Loh Mei Fang (USM Internship Student)