Get quality teaching staff, says Masidi

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KOTA KINABALU: Private higher learning institutes must ponder on how to get quality teaching staff for their establishment, said Tourism, Culture and Environment Minister Datuk Seri Panglima Masidi Manjun.

Masidi, who is the state education exco, said the private learning institutes must also think in the global context and endeavour to churn out quality graduates and manpower.

He believed that this was the way forward to attain the State’s aspiration to become an education hub for the region.

Masidi also stressed the need to address the lopsided supply and demand of graduates.

“At one end, we have a lot of unemployed graduates (due to the lack of demand for people with their expertise) and the lack of graduates (where expertise was facing a shortage),” he said at the Memorandum of Understanding signing ceremony between Sabah Institute of Art (SIA) and Chungyu Institute, SIA and University of Kennedy (USA), and between SIA and University College of Technology Sarawak here yesterday

Masidi also urged private higher learning institutes in Sabah and Sarawak to work smart with others in the same line.

He said that they needed to market their institutes beyond Sabah and Sarawak as the population of 6.4 million in both states were not capable of supporting the establishment of many of such institutes.

“There are only 3.2 million people in Sabah and 3.2 million in Sarawak,” he said, adding that unless these institutes considered these factors carefully, they might end up wasting much of their investments establishing their educational institutions here.

He also said that at one time, a total of 700 licences were issued to educational institutes to carry out their activities in Sabah, but less than half were still operational now.

In his speech, Masidi said that the Sabah Government had been aggressively promoting Sabah’s edu-tourism which was driven by anticipation of the growing popularity of local education institutions among foreign and local students.

“The State will also continue to encourage the establishment of higher learning institutes in Sabah as it will not only create more education opportunities for both local and foreign students but also job opportunities for Sabahans.”

Also present at the event were SIA president and chief executive officer Professor Dato’ Wilson Yong Tung Yung, Chungyu Institute of Technology president Dr Chen Chi Hsiung, University College Technology Sarawak vice chancellor Professor Dato Dr Abdul Hakim Juri and a representative from the University of Kennedy, Tony Lin.