THE Covid-19 pandemic has had a devastating effect on private higher education and has disrupted traditional perceptions of what a university education is or should be.

In order to address this existential crisis, everyone within the Malaysian higher education community must rebuild our belief in what we are doing. Only when we genuinely believe that what we offer as an educational community provides what our stakeholders want and need can we engage with confidence to create meaningful educational experiences.

To rebuild our belief in higher education we have to ask some hard questions. Are we talking with and listening to our stakeholders to find out what they need and how we can help them or are we talking at them and telling them what is best for them?

Are we genuinely excited about what we offer as academics, scholars, managers and leaders in the higher education community? Are we helping our stakeholders, especially our students, or are we merely selling certificates to them without any real interest in whether it will help them or not?

Despite the accolades, rankings and boy-scout badges, do we really believe that what we offer in Malaysian higher education is best-in-class? Is what we offer different, especially when many world-class universities offer online programmes streets ahead of Malaysian offerings?

Above all, the most important question is: Would you choose to study in Malaysian higher education if you had a choice not to?

By answering some of these questions we can begin to lay the foundation of belief in what we are doing as the first steps in a strategic journey to build and sustain a successful university.

For example, as recently as 2016 the Malaysia University of Science and Technology (MUST) had fewer than 400 students but since then the enrolment has increased five-fold. Even during the worse year in living memory for private higher education, MUST achieved an increase of more than 50% in total enrolment in 2020.

MUST has an asset-light strategy in which resources are focused on improving student experience, supporting faculty and staff and investing in our educational offer, particularly industry-relevant courses and innovative, technology-driven teaching.

Resources are never wasted on non-education vanity projects and underused buildings and a balanced scorecard approach is used to design MUST strategy and obtain a holistic view of the way the university operates in a cost-efficient manner.

Four perspectives play prominent roles. The first is transformation through innovative teaching and learning using technology-driven and personalised learning design. In 2019, our teaching and learning was rated as 5-stars in the internationally recognised Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) rating system which benchmarks us against the best in the world.

Second, sustainable financial planning is essential to ensure that current and future needs are covered. We are guided by industry research which has shown that many private universities are technically insolvent. This affects their day-to-day operations as well as their long-term growth plans and this was something we are determined to avoid.

Indeed, against the tide, MUST was profitable during 2020 and, with the support of our chairman Effendi Norwawi, our staff received a bonus and salary increment as a reward for their hard work and dedication during the Covid crisis.

The third pillar of our strategy is to focus on research and strong industry collaboration. MUST has more than 200 active research students on our PhD programme giving us probably the largest research student community among the Malaysian private universities.

In 2019 we established the Asia Supply Chain and Logistics Council to work with industry in order to enhance our programmes and in 2020 we worked with the International Telecommunications Union on a joint Industry 4.0 Human Capital Development Programme.

We have developed certified professional programmes and a dual certification programme for Certified Professional Logistics Managers with the International Supply Chain Education Alliance (ISCEA). In 2019 MUST was rated by QS as 5-stars for graduate employability in-line with the best universities in the world.

The fourth pillar of our strategy has been our transnational education model which focuses on the internationalization and diversity of our community, our faculty, staff and students as well as our wider stakeholders.

In 2017 we introduced our global outreach strategy to diversify and expand market reach and the following year we established collaborations with colleges and universities in Vietnam, China, Africa, Sri Lanka, Vietnam and Myanmar to offer our MBA and PhD programmes.

These transnational partnerships have proved to be the backbone of our success during the covid-pandemic because our partners can continue to enrol students onto our blended programmes in-situ even during travel restrictions.

To enhance the international value of our programmes we formalized dual certification of our existing bachelor and MBA degrees in 2019 with the Chartered Management Institute (CMI) in the United Kingdom for their Level 5 and Level 7 certificates to provide international professional accreditation of our academic degrees.

As a result of our successful transnational strategy, our international students account for more than 40% of our student community and in the latest QS Asia Rankings we were acknowledged as number one in Asia for International Students – an incredible achievement in such a short time.

We have continued to foster international accreditation and in 2021 we achieved full membership of European Foundation for Management Development. The EFMD Quality Improvement System is the gold-standard for higher education institutions of management and business and runs the EQUIS accreditation programme which we target to achieve within the next 3-4 years.

To build our strategy, we have listened to our stakeholders, especially are students and transnational partners, to find out what they need and we have delivered it to the best of our ability. We have a community that is genuinely excited about what we offer and we focus on delivering rather than selling our programmes.

Our international engagement benchmarks us with the best in the world and we rank top in Asia for our expertise in international student experience. Above all we have never lost our belief in what we are doing and we believe that this is the foundation we can share for all Malaysian universities to follow. – June 1, 2021.

* Professor Dr Premkumar Rajagopal is president of the Malaysia University of Science and Technology (MUST) and founding president of the International Supply Chain Education Alliance (ISCEA), Malaysia Chapter. Professor Dr Geoffrey Williams is an economist in the Business School at MUST and a member of the ISCEA-Malaysia Advisory Board.

* This is the opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of The Malaysian Insight. Article may be edited for brevity and clarity.