THE offer of free education is not only impossible in the current economy and culture, but will breed students who will not value their education, said a group of public university lecturers.

Several lecturers told The Malaysian Insight Malaysian students were not ready for free tertiary education, one of the promises made by Pakatan Harapan in its manifesto should it take over Putrajaya in the next general election.

“If we make it free, people will not want to come for classes because the students don’t need to pay anything. So there’s no commitment,” said International Islamic University lecturer Dr Rosemaliza Mohd Kamalludeen.

“But they know they have to work hard when they have invested something.” 

She said the idea of free education was good, but needed more time to implement.

“We need to change the culture of when something is free, we can’t just throw it around. We don’t want to place education at that level.

“There is actually a high value to education. We have to understand that,” she said when met at a university-industry dialogue.

Pakatan Harapan’s manifesto which was released yesterday listed policies it says it will implement within the first term of it being voted into government.

Among the items is the promise of free education at all public universities.

Another lecturer Dr Nurul Adilah Abdul Latiff, 38, said existing fees at public universities were low and waiving them was not necessary.

“Free education needs to be seen from the perspective of the value of knowledge because we know education is actually priceless,” she said.

“In Malaysia, what the students pay now is minimal compared to what the universities can offer,” said the Universiti Putra Malaysia lecturer.

Nurul Adilah said Malaysia should not be compared to developed nations that are offering free education because the taxes paid by Malaysians were far lower.

Dr Haliyana Khalid from Universiti Teknologi Malaysia also warned the plan to offer free education must not be hastily implemented.

“There needs to be attention and planning because there might be many challenges.

“There are many factors to consider. We cannot just take the example of developed countries, we have to look at our own situation, own surroundings and the situation the country is in.

“Sure, everyone wants free education, but we need to weigh the situation,” she said.

In spite of the low fees charged at local universities, it was recently reported more than half of the 622,768 Malaysians who were barred from leaving the country since 2010 were PTPTN loan defaulters.

The PH Manifesto also listed steps to reduce the burden of PTPTN loan repayments, including delaying the repayment of loans for those earning less than RM4,000 and removing the policy of blacklisting defaulters. – March 9, 2018.

Editor’s note: we have removed the original picture from the story after it was pointed out to us that it was used without permission. The error is regretted.