Autonomous status for public universities

KUALA LUMPUR: All 20 public universities in the country have been accorded autonomous status after six of them received autonomous status letters from the Education Ministry.

The ministry, in a statement, said the status gave power to a university’s board of directors and its board of governors to make their own decisions.

“The autonomy is a delegation of power to empower the institutions and enable them to move towards excellence.

“The status enables universities to be more flexible in making decisions to determine their direction, including finance and human resources management.”

The statement said even though public universities had the power to manage their resources without referring to a central agency, they should adhere to basic principles as their autonomy was not absolute and they were subjected to the government’s and ministry’s policies and strategies on higher education.

The public universities’ autonomous programme was introduced in 2012 under the National Higher Education Strategic Plan.

“The delegation of power was conducted in stages as it required negotiations between the Education Ministry and other central agencies,” the statement said.

The six universities which received their autonomous status letters were Universiti Sultan Zainal Abidin, Universiti Malaysia Kelantan, Universiti Pertahanan Nasional Malaysia, Universiti Perguruan Sultan Idris, Universiti Malaysia Sabah and Universiti Malaysia Perlis.