Idris Jusoh regrets statement politicised

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SHAH ALAM: Second Education minister Datuk Seri Idris Jusoh expressed regret that his statement regarding the national higher education system being on par with advanced nations was continued to be politicised by the opposition.

He said the facts available clearly showed that higher education in the country had continued to improve from time to time and was still on the rise.

“I am proud of saying that our education system is soaring upwards and that on many fronts we are indeed world class.

“However, I do not say that we are comfortable and don’t want to change, that is why we have the Malaysia Education Blueprint (Higher Education) 2015-2025 which is expected to be announced in March this year to continue to raise the education performance of the country,” he told a press conference after launching the book ‘Destini di Hujung Pelangi’ written by founder of Akademi NLP Malaysia, Md Taib Mat, here yesterday.

Idris said this in response to the criticisms hurled by the opposition against his comments on Saturday that the country’s higher education system was now on par with advanced countries, including the United Kingdom, Germany, and Australia in terms of quality of education.

Commenting further, he said besides the aspect of foreign students enrolment and university rankings, the country’s higher education could be said to be world class based on other factors such as achievement in subjects, whereby 11 public institutions of higher learning were listed among the top 100 universities in the world.

“Based on QS Ranking by Subject, Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM) is in the 28th position in the world for environmental science while Universiti Putra Malaysia (UPM) is ranked 54th worlwide for agricultural science based on the Best Global Universities Rankings,” he said.

Besides that, he said University of Malaya (UM) was listed in the top 100 for modern languages, computer science, chemistry, as well as electrical, mechanical, aeronautical, and

manufacturing engineering, while USM was also listed in the top 100 for civil and structural engineering, chemical engineering, pharmacy and pharmacology, computer science, and information systems.

UM, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM) and UPM were among the world’s top 100 for education, while UKM was listed in the top 100 for politics, he said.

He also urged the opposition that continued to discredit the government to stop doing so, because it clearly did not contribute towards raising the quality of education in the country.

“To the opposition, nothing is right. Let us not condemn our own country, we need to change our mentality. What I have given before this and today (regarding the country’s achievement in higher education) are based on facts which have not been created by myself, but acknowledged by the world,” he added. — Bernama