‘IBS College able to weather through challenges’
MIRI: IBS College remains the choice of many young people, amidst what is seen as a challenging year for private colleges.
Chief executive officer Dr Antony Hii, in expressing his concern about the state of private colleges in Malaysia, which he describes as ‘struggling’ in that a lot of these colleges have been sold off or undergone mergers, which contributes to the dwindling number of private institutions of higher learning in the country.
“Amidst this predicament, IBS College has managed to do well this year, compared with 2017, by achieving a 10-per cent business growth, at a time when many private colleges are experiencing negative growth,” he spoke during IBS College’s annual dinner recently.
Hii said in 2001 when he took over the management of the college, which initially started in 1998, there were just two students and one programme to its name.
Adding on, he said towards becoming premier private business school here, IBS College also had its fair share of challenges.
In this regard, he said as a company that needed to create and diversify products, IBS College had been introducing one programme every two years – culminating in 10 academic programmes, from certificates to Master’s degrees, provided by the institution currently.
This year also marked the college’s 20th anniversary.
In view of IBS College’s Corporate Master of Business Administration ( CMBA) and Master of Science in Human Resource Development run in collaboration with Universiti Malaysia Sarawak ( Unimas), Hii believed that in the future, the college would introduce doctorate ( PhD) programmes as more individuals would come forth to pursue higher education.
On a related matter, he reminded all that the success of the company did not depend only on having to work hard, but also on working very diligently – meaning everyone must ‘abide by the rules of the game’.
This, he said, had contributed significantly to the success of IBS College, which recently achieved the Six- Star ranking under MyQuest 2016/2017 by the Ministry of Higher Education – placing it as among the best private colleges in Malaysia.
“I envisage that over the next five to 10 years, IBS College would continue be the forefront in producing quality industryrelevant graduates,” said Hii.