HIGHER EDUCATION

education and society is often implied to be one-way, where education is expected to fit in with economic and political trends, rather than, opposing them and representing something different.

Such general understanding of the relationship between education and the socio-economic structures and what the education position involves helps us to form a projection of future HE associated with the fourth industrial revolution.

Malaysian HE has gradually progressed from the elite phase to mass HE and then to postmassification stages.

Many advanced and some developing economies enjoy the tertiary participation rates of over 50 per cent.

Another characteristic of this trend is internationalisation of both students and staff.

According to a report from OECD (Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development) with demographic changes, international student mobility is expected to reach eight million students per year by 2025.

The core mission of HE remains the same, whatever the era. The goal of HE is to ensure quality of learning via teaching, to enable the students to get the latest knowledge through exploratory research, and to sustain the development of societies by means of service.

One of the principal tasks of every university is to educate the youth.

Therefore, it is necessary to implement appropriate teaching strategies and to organise work in a way that fosters learning.

This has implications on adaptable learning programmes, better learning experience and lifelong learning attitude.

Moreover, the journey towards global competition in the higher education requires institutions to put a huge amount of effort into research and development.

Experts believe these forces range from new technology deployment to global cooperation and collaboration.

The author believes that in order to sustain the competitive position among world HE system, we need to radically improve educational services. In particular, we need to drive much greater innovation, and competition into education.