It has been reported that the Malaysian Qualification Agency (MQA) will be established in June and will take over the functions of the National Accredition Board (LAN).
How is the MQA different from the LAN? Datuk Dr Sharifah Hapsah Shahabudin, who is the Chief Executive Officer of LAN as well as the head of the provisional MQA team gives us some clues in the article by the New Straits Times.
At present, approval for the conduct of particular courses at the institutions of higher learning is a separate process from its accreditation. Hence you actually can have courses which are approved but are not accredited with the LAN.
Ah... is this a case of the right hand of the same ministry not knowing what the left hand is doing? Looking at the statistics, it appears that unaccredited approved courses outnumber accredited ones by more than 3 to 1 (2,646 to 727). Hence it appears that a student in the higher education sector in Malaysia is more likely to be pursuing an unaccredited programme than an accredited one. Would that explain the reasons why student loans are currently granted to unaccredited programmes?
We now also learn that accreditation is a voluntary exercise by the respective educational institutions. This means that upon receiving approval for the courses, the institutions have no obligations to have the course accredited by LAN. Then, at this point of time, "approval" by the Ministry of Higher Education is the only point in which the "quality" of the courses are vetted. Or is it?
Datuk Dr Sharifah Hapsah Shahabudin admitted that currently, the Ministry only does a cursory check on the programme outline before giving approval. Hence current students should take note that the stamp of "approval" from the Ministry is not in anyway to be taken as a stamp of a course which has met even the minimum quality benchmarks set by agencies such as the LAN.
Datuk Dr Sharifah Hapsah Shahabudin did add that with the merger of the approval and accreditation functions in the new MQA, the process will become synchronous and all courses will undergo the accreditation process in accordance to the new quality framework. But it does send shivers down the spine to think that all this while, colleges, mostly private ones, are probably able to come up with poor programmes and yet still obtain the necessary approvals from the Ministry.
The MQA Act is expected to be tabled and passed in Parliament in June, to replace the LAN Act. As always with many government acts and regulations which are noble in intent, the biggest questions concerning the MQA will be whether it will be substantive enough and whether it will set the quality bar high enough to ensure that the courses accredited do indeed possess the attributes of a half-decent programme.
How is the MQA different from the LAN? Datuk Dr Sharifah Hapsah Shahabudin, who is the Chief Executive Officer of LAN as well as the head of the provisional MQA team gives us some clues in the article by the New Straits Times.
At present, approval for the conduct of particular courses at the institutions of higher learning is a separate process from its accreditation. Hence you actually can have courses which are approved but are not accredited with the LAN.
Ah... is this a case of the right hand of the same ministry not knowing what the left hand is doing? Looking at the statistics, it appears that unaccredited approved courses outnumber accredited ones by more than 3 to 1 (2,646 to 727). Hence it appears that a student in the higher education sector in Malaysia is more likely to be pursuing an unaccredited programme than an accredited one. Would that explain the reasons why student loans are currently granted to unaccredited programmes?
We now also learn that accreditation is a voluntary exercise by the respective educational institutions. This means that upon receiving approval for the courses, the institutions have no obligations to have the course accredited by LAN. Then, at this point of time, "approval" by the Ministry of Higher Education is the only point in which the "quality" of the courses are vetted. Or is it?
Datuk Dr Sharifah Hapsah Shahabudin admitted that currently, the Ministry only does a cursory check on the programme outline before giving approval. Hence current students should take note that the stamp of "approval" from the Ministry is not in anyway to be taken as a stamp of a course which has met even the minimum quality benchmarks set by agencies such as the LAN.
Datuk Dr Sharifah Hapsah Shahabudin did add that with the merger of the approval and accreditation functions in the new MQA, the process will become synchronous and all courses will undergo the accreditation process in accordance to the new quality framework. But it does send shivers down the spine to think that all this while, colleges, mostly private ones, are probably able to come up with poor programmes and yet still obtain the necessary approvals from the Ministry.
The MQA Act is expected to be tabled and passed in Parliament in June, to replace the LAN Act. As always with many government acts and regulations which are noble in intent, the biggest questions concerning the MQA will be whether it will be substantive enough and whether it will set the quality bar high enough to ensure that the courses accredited do indeed possess the attributes of a half-decent programme.
5 comments:
Interesting article. Does this means that public university may also offer courses that are not accreditted? I would have thought that any courses offered by Malaysian higher learning centres, both public and private, should be automatically accredited. After all if our own country do not recognised our own degree, how do we expect other countries to recognised our university degree??!!
Blurrr......
http://www.malaysiakini.com/news/43293
Teachers unaware of 'unrecognised' courses
Kuek Ser Kuang Keng
Nov 19, 05 1:47pm
Thirty-one degree courses from six public universities and one from a private college are not recognised by the Public Service Department (PSD), according to an official letter by the Education Service Commission (SPP).
wormie, isn't this a ' dream come true'?
I hope the new MQA people are better than the LAN people who were more interested in knowing how much the private sector lecturers were earning so that they can compare theirs with the private sector.
Interesting, you've been Spyed :)
LAN shouldn't exist at the first place! What so called LAN just about study one or two more subject which is useless in the future career. So what is the purpose of taking LAN? Just because of recognize by Malaysia Govern? People do not even look into govern job as most of the chances will give to "their own people". They are not looking at the quality of the candidate but look at their race.
Pointless seem like mission for Malaysia...
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