Page 27 - AEI Insights Vol. 7 2021

Munusamy and Hashim, 2021

how Asia and Europe working together for better future in higher education”. AEI has
conducted the AEI-ASEM Summer School programme since 2015 as a strategy to overcome
mobility imbalance between Asia and Europe. Furthermore, a senior executive officer involved
in managing an international student’s agency commended the AEP: “we acknowledge the role
carried out by the AEP to promote the internationalisation of higher education. Malaysia has
signed an MOU with UK-NARIC and has been receiving mobility students from Europe
particularly from the United Kingdom, Germany and France”.

Although exchange programmes could promote greater internationalisation, interviewees
indicated that there is no clear definition of balanced mobility. An expert on internationalisation
said that balanced mobility depends on a comprehensive understanding and an openness to
explore other cultures. The expert added that this is a key reason why the balanced mobility
indicators in global ranking matrices should be measured wisely to assess its impact on
internationalisation. The importance of exchange programmes has been praised by many
officers of MOHE and research universities. However, several interviewees have indicated that
few higher education institutions in Malaysia are struggling to implement mobility
programmes due to lack of funding and challenges in fulfilling the student’s choice of
destination country. For example, “lots of students coming to Malaysia such as from Thailand
and Indonesia, but our students don’t want to go there” stated by a senior officer of a research
university in the southern part of Malaysia. Likewise, a senior director responsible for
internationalisation at the DHE claimed that the regional programme, the ASEAN International
Mobility Student Programme (AIMS) is more useful than other inter-regional mobility
programmes. Nevertheless, according to an officer of a research university in Klang Valley,
mobility programmes are one of the Key Performance Indicators (KPI) of public universities
and they need to achieve the KPIs. The interviewees also explained that the private universities
in Malaysia do not face any problems in conducting mobility programmes as they have good
funding. In summary, an international expert on internationalisation suggested that the AEP
initiatives such as the ASEM Work Placement programme and the AEI-ASEM Summer School
programme could enhance higher education exchange programmes between ASEM partners,
including Malaysia.

Industry-academia collaboration
The fourth factor indicated was the support of the AEP in facilitating industry-academia
collaboration. A senior officer responsible for private higher education management at the
DHE stated that Malaysia should focus on this theme to produce skilled graduates required by
industry for the nation’s growth. This is a new development and a significant priority for
Malaysia because “universities no longer providing knowledge but it’s linking the knowledge
with the skills requested by the industry (international officers of two research universities in
Klang Valley). Therefore, more collaboration with industries is needed to achieve the desired
graduate employability. The AEP has emphasised the importance of university-business
cooperation since 2011, thus an expert on research and planning of MOHE believed that
Malaysia can improve collaboration with European countries by sending Malaysian students
for internship and placement programmes at the top European multinational companies in Asia
and Europe, including Malaysia. In other words, industry-academia collaboration is vital to
enhance Malaysia’s higher education internationalisation and for the country to become an
international hub of higher education in the region. Indeed, the AEP can provide a platform to
learn the best practices of European industry-academia collaboration, if not “our higher

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