A mission to produce ‘global citizens’
Universiti Malaya is broadening its international connections and preparing its students to help Malaysia to compete with the rest of the world

Established by the British in 1949, Malaysia’s oldest university, Universiti Malaya (UM) has been producing a stream of political leaders and top company chief executives for decades. Prominent alumni include the current Prime Minister Abdullah Badawi.

Appointed in 2006 to provide fresh impetus, one of the first things Vice-Chancellor Rafiah Salim did was to adopt the slogan “Producing leaders since 1905” – a reference to the institution’s even earlier roots in the King Edward VII College of Medicine, founded at the beginning of the last century. “UM is at the very heart of the progress of our nation, committed to being the academic hub that continuously creates the intellectual capital required in sustaining the growth of Malaysia,” she says.

Situated on a 750-acre campus in the southwest of Kuala Lumpur, Universiti Malaya is the only public university located in the Malaysian capital Kuala Lumpur. It is also one of the four Malaysian tertiary institutions awarded research-intensive status.
Dr Rafiah is the first woman in the university’s history to hold the position of Vice-Chancellor. She began working at the university in 1973 as a lecturer in the Law faculty, and since then her stellar career has included stints as Assistant Secretary-General for the United Nations Human Resource Management, Assistant Governor of Bank Negara and Human Resource General Manager with Malayan Banking Berhad.

Her vision for UM is clear. She wants the university to produce “global citizens.” She says: “For Malaysia, we all have to think global. Like it or not, we have to open our economy to reach the status of developed nation by 2020. We need to compete with the rest of the international players of the global economy. Our population has to be ready to meet that challenge.”

Dr Rafiah has also been working to ensure that the vast majority of the university’s courses are recognised by international bodies, such as the Royal College of Surgeons, the Institute of Chartered Accountants and the Royal Institute of British Architects.

“All of this means that if you get a degree from UM it is as good as getting an international degree that is approved by the British.” When students come to UM, she adds, they get a high value degree at a competitive price.

Rafiah Salim Vice-Chancellor of Universiti Malaya

It is not just a question of educating people, she says, but about changing their mentality, and she has brought in international students and lecturers to broaden the outlook of those studying and working at the university by giving them the opportunity to work with people from other countries.

In addition to 26,000 Malaysian undergraduate and postgraduate students, UM caters for 400 full-time and exchange international undergraduates and 1,335 postgraduates from 69 nations. Last year memoranda of understanding (MoUs) were signed to strengthen collaboration with 11 Indonesian Universities and extend UM’s internationalism.

Cutting edge research is carried out in a wide variety of areas at UM, including agri-biotechnology, emerging biomedical technology, natural product and drug discovery and oral cancer.

Partnerships have been established with leading universities around the world. “Apart from the various R&D work that has been going on, we are also partnering with some of the top British institutions. We have a relationship with Oxford University, Cambridge University, King’s College, Queen Mary College, Imperial, etc. We do massive work with Southampton University, which is a national centre for ocean and earth studies. They do a lot of work in the Atlantic Ocean but they do not work on the Pacific side. We want to be their partner here.

“We have research relationships with Peking, Tsinghua, Fudan and Xiamen Universities in China. We collaborate with the US National Institute of Health, and with Yale University on HIV and substance abuse. UM is also the WHO Centre for tropical diseases like dengue and malaria.”

Research at UM’s Ulu Gombak Biodiversity Centre, situated in a secondary and primary forest, has resulted in some landmark discoveries and breakthroughs over its 40-year history. An experimental farm offers facilities for research in animal and plant science and other biological science disciplines.

A recent invention by a member of staff of the Faculty of Built Environment is a building brick made out of rubbish, which won the Diamond Award in the Earth Science category at the British Invention Show last year.

“It has the same strength as an ordinary brick,” says Dr Rafiah. “Can you imagine what that could do for the environment? No other non-British product has ever been awarded a Diamond Award in this category. They wanted to buy it off him there and then but he resisted. We have big companies in Malaysia that could develop this.”