Defining the college industry in Kuching

Kuching plays host to a myriad of private colleges – whether they are subsidiaries of universities or university colleges established in West Malaysia or private institutions that conduct franchised programmes from fully-fledged universities. BizHive Weekly talks to three major college players, namely Sunway College Kuching, Segi College Kuching and FTMS International Kuching, on their thoughts about the industry and future growth plans.

For those who are not ready to make the leap straight into universities, colleges are the next stepping stone towards completing formal education.

Colleges come in many forms and sizes. They can be a degree-awarding tertiary educational institution, a part of a university, or an institution offering vocational education.

Kuching, in particular, plays host to a myriad of private colleges – whether they are subsidiaries of universities or university colleges established in West Malaysia or private institutions to conduct franchised programmes from fully-fledged universities.

The state also has a community college for school leavers seeking further educa­tion in public institutions in Kuching.

And yet, in the race to both produce quality students and excel as a business, it is no easy task to maintain that level of quality and quantity to survive in this industry, especially with over 400 colleges already present in the country.

The government realising that there were too many private colleges in the country, decided to impose a two-year moratorium on new private tertiary institutions. In announcing the two-year moratorium from February 1, 2013 Higher Education Minister Datuk Seri Mohamed Khaled Nordin said there were more than enough higher education institutions in the country to meet both local and international demand.

“We have had moratoriums before this for fields such as dentistry, medicine and nursing. To us, 414 private colleges is a lot,” he was quoted as saying in media reports. As of November 30 last year, there were 37 private universities, 20 university-colleges, seven foreign branch campuses and 414 private colleges in the country.

Mohamed Khaled said some private institutions had fewer than 500 students, making them unsustainable. “If too many institutions have small student numbers, we’ll face a lot of problems, including these institutions closing down… and their incomes will be affected. So it’s better that we maintain (the current private institutions), concentrate on their quality and make sure they are the only current players,” he said.

The moratorium did not affect institu­tions whose applications were currently being processed, existing institutions that had applied to upgrade their status and foreign branch campuses that ‘rate highly in international rankings’.

On May 1, 2011, the ministry imposed a five-year moratorium on new medical courses to address the houseman glut. The ministry had also frozen the setting-up of new private nursing colleges and diploma programmes in nursing since July 2010.

Mohamed Khaled had said the ministry would conduct an annual audit on 10 pri­vate universities and university-colleges to ensure they were up to mark. He added that the ministry would also carry out a review of the Private Education Act 1996 and a study on the higher education financ­ing system.

He rationalised that the over-dependence of tertiary institutions on government grants had resulted in a phenomenon where institutions were not cost-efficient and fail­ing to be independent and competitive.

The National Higher Education Fund Corporation (PTPTN), meanwhile, needed a new model to ensure it remained sustain­able without abandoning the policy of equity in education he opined.

He revealed that the review of the Private Higher Education Act 1996 would be carried out by a committee headed by Taylor’s Uni­versity vice-chancellor Professor Datuk Dr Hassan Said and would be completed by the end of the year.

What the ministry did was timely as it had come to a point whereby supply of college education had exceeded demand, highlighted Sunway College Kuching chief executive officer Joseph Lim in an interview with BizHive Weekly.

“On the moratorium, I guess that would be a situation whereby supply is more than demand. It’s just a way for the gov­ernment curbing the whole thing, making sure there is a right level,” he said.

“The whole idea is to eliminate the smaller players because this aims to ensure that those who can survive will survive rather than everyone produc­ing 100 or 200 students at the end of the day – you’re not able to meet the end goals.”

Lim said this had always been the trend on rationalisation, whereby saturation led to mergers and acquisitions (M&As) within the sector.

“Again, for Sarawak market especially the East Malaysian market, the main attributes will be the population,” he highlighted.

“In West Malaysia, you have the popu­lation to support education.

“Hopefully, the vocational training for the Sarawak Corridor of Renewable Energy (SCORE) will help for the surviv­ing private institutions.”

FTMS International College chief exec­utive officer David Chew shared the same sentiment, applauding the government on the recent two-year moratorium.

“Looking at the market size, I guess the ministry has done a good job,” he said.

“They have studied the situation and I believe there must be a reason why they put out this moratorium. I would prob­ably one of the reasons is because the players in the market has reached a stage whereby it is considered as quite full.

“If you just talk about Sarawak, yes I do think it is quite saturated. The next step is for everyone to beef up. The authori­ties actually have to work closely with existing players and see how we can do that instead of getting more players to come in.”

On this note, BizHive Weekly talked to three major college players, namely Sunway College Kuching, SEGi College Kuching and FTMS International Kuch­ing, on their thoughts about the industry and future growth plans.

SEGi College Sarawak continues providing quality education

As one of the players well established within the atmosphere here, SEGi College Sarawak continues to produce students in many fields in Kuching, more importantly for law and business subjects.

“SEGi College Sarawak was originally called Institut Pengajian Perdagangan dan Pengurusan (Institute of Business and Management Studies (IBMS),” revealed SEGi International Bhd chief operating officer Stella Lau in an email interview with BizHive Weekly.

To note, Lau had worked at SEGi College Sarawak for 12 years from 1999 to 2011, first as a lecturer and ended as its principal.

“Subsequently, a letter from the Ministry of Education, Malaysia in March 2002 pertaining to the change of name to ‘IBMS College’ was received.

Following a rebranding and consolidation exercise in 2005, IBMS College is now known as SEGi College Sarawak.

“A letter from the Ministry of Higher Education, dated October 25, 2005 gives the ministry’s approval for the change of name.

Commencing operations in 1990, SEGi College Sarawak started out as an institution offering law and business programmes.”

Since then, Lau said SEGi had enjoyed good growth, as with some other industry players.

“It is still currently the only institution offering law degree programme in East Malaysia at the same time, a leading provider in business, accountancy, hospitality, allied health, early child-hood education and creative arts programmes,” she appended.

The Kuching outlet currently enjoys student capacity per semester of between 500 and 700 students.

Lau said SEGi College Sarawak was doing very well, with positive year on year growth and would be looking to increase this with more enrolments.

SEGi College Sarawak stands as one of the largest and oldest private colleges in Borneo, offering a range of industry-driven programmes approved by the Ministry of Higher Education, Malaysia (foundation, diploma, degree and postgraduate MBA).

Through its collaborations with partner foreign universities from UK, Australia and the US, SEGi College Sarawak provide students with the opportunity to secure degrees from internationally recognised universities while studying here in Kuching.

“Our programmes, from foundation to Master Degrees, are industry-driven, making it relevant to the needs of the various industries.

This creates higher employability rates and graduates can rest assured that they will be in demand when they step through SEGi’s doors.”

When asked on her thoughts about the recent two year moratorium set by the government on providing new licenses for universities of colleges, Lau said this would not spell ‘doom and gloom’ for the industry in Kuching.

“In Sarawak, there has not been significant increase in competition, but rather almost all education providers here have seen a rather flattened growth last year,” she explained.

“Some call it market saturation.

Others feel that more students are opting to study in West Malaysia and that’s the real competition.

“Perhaps they are right in a way.

Increased mobility means that students have more options now than before,” she added.

“But is it all doom for this industry in Kuching? Definitely not.

A lot of parents and students still choose Kuching.

And the reasons are obvious.

The environment is conducive.

This is a great place to study and live in.

“Tuition fees are affordable, and the quality of education is on par with the bigger players in West Malaysia.”

SEGi College Kuching would stand to gain from these positive traits as its defining aspect – student centric and industry driven – remained the key core criteria that sets the group apart.

“Our students learned differently, and we work very closely with our industry partners to give our students that extra ad-vantage, in career readiness, in their confidence level, in developing their thought processes.”

To note, SEGi College Sarawak is seen as the gateway for the group to East Malaysia.

Established with the prime objective of providing quality training to school leavers to prepare them for their future, SEGi College Sarawak today stands as one of the largest private colleges in East Malaysia.

The group offers a wide range of programmes to meet the requirements of today’s employers.

Following their expansion into nursing and healthcare-related qualifications as well as the addition of the American Degree Programme, the college now has three campuses within close proximity to each other.

The main campus is situated at the heart of the capital city of Kuching, providing students with access to local amenities nearby such as banks, restaurants, hotels and shopping centres.

The Kuching main campus provides programmes in the fields of management, accountancy, hospitality, law and information technology (IT).

The newly opened Faculty of Nursing and Allied Health currently offers the Diploma in Nursing, Diploma in Medical Laboratory Technology and the Diploma in Environmental Health.

Meanwhile, the group’s third campus is the Training Centre where the vocational and hands-on courses are conducted offering a range of certificates allowing students to seek careers in automotive maintenance, tourism, desktop publishing, hospitality and customer service.

When asked on plans to further increase its capacity, introduce new courses or open a new outlet in the near future, Lau revealed that SEGi College recently introduced a number of new courses in Islamic Finance, Psychology and Culinary Arts – further varying the myriad of offerings available at the college.

Sunway College Kuching filling the gaps in the industry

Sunway College Kuching is doing its part in fulfilling the need for more accountants and business related professions in the state.

According to Sunway College Kuching’s chief executive officer Joseph Lim in an interview with BizHive Weekly, the state government was very much looking at the Sarawak Corridor of Renewable Energy (SCORE) and its projects.

“Particularly given the SCORE initiative, I think a lot of courses will need to be vocational or at least partially vocational in that sense,” Lim highlighted.

“Thus, at the same time, it has to be industry relevant so that when they finish the course, they can be absorbed into the industries.”

As far as outlook is concerned, Lim believed that the lower part of accounting in terms of accounting technicians – would give them a good opportunity in the field.

This was based on Lim’s belief that there was a significant gap within the field of accounting technicians in the state and there was a dire need to fill that gap.

“To produce these accounting technicians to do all these work, we do have professional account-ants but we need to fill up the gap,” he stressed on.

“We have a lot of ac-counting professionals but we do not have accounting technicians which leaves a gap here.”

To note, accounting technicians prepare accounts, collect source documents, compile and  so forth.

“We have people looking at the bigger picture, but we have no-body to do the picture for you,” he said as a metaphor.

“We’re trying to bridge the gap to ensure that they have the foundation when they do the work.

That part will certainly help with the development of SCORE, particularly on industries such as aluminium, tourism, oil and gas – all the core industries.”

This was why Sunway College Kuching was established in the year 2007, explained Lim, where-by, “The whole idea is actually to ensure that we can get accounting courses from certificate up to professional levels (like ACCA) done wholly and exclusively in Kuching.”

“Back then, students would have to do this on a correspondence basis so now you have distance learning or online.

Or else you’d have to fly to UK or go to Singapore and so on.

We wanted something that can be done locally and finished locally.”

“Since then, the group has grown, so much so that it reached full capacity in terms of students, room usage and facilities at its previous location at the 3rd Mile area.

When we reached our capacity that time, we reached about 1,000 students.

Moving here (to the Song Plaza location), we can easily expand to between 1,500 and 1,800 students,” he revealed, adding that this amounted to a RM1.6 million investment.

“There is definitely room for expansion.

Currently we are occupying four levels of Song Plaza and we’ve got another four levels available so we have the capability to expand in that sense in the future.

“We thought that this would be a strategic location with modern facilities and equipments that basically will help students not just academically but outside the classrooms as well.”

Lim underlined the group performance over the years was encouraging, with student intake basically growing at a healthy growth rate of 25 per cent over the years.

“There are quite some room for improvement because at the moment, where there are Certified Accounting Technician (CAT) courses up front, we still have about 50 per cent of the market share so at least another 20 to 30 per cent of the market share needs to be captured,” he revealed.

“ACCA depend on CAT because they are the feeders into the programme so roughly about 50, 60 per cent of the market share.

So we’re working closely with the state government to actually help achieve the nation figures of producing 10,000 to 15,000 accountants by 2020 for Sarawak.

For Malaysia, it’s about 60,000.

For that figure, we’ll have to put in a lot of effort,” he hoped.

When asked if he thought there was competition within the provi-sion of accounting and business related courses here, Lim alleviated any fears as Sunway College Kuching was offering differentiated courses.

Moving forward, Lim unveiled plans for more courses.

“We are waiting for our internal diploma in business accounting, waiting for it to be approved by the Malaysian Qualifications Agency  (MQA) and the Ministry of Higher Education (MOHE).

It’s towards the last stages now with final amendments so once that’s done, we hope we can introduce it by April.

“The diploma will be another feeder for diploma to move on to ACCA or Chartered Institute of Management Accountants (CIMA).

That would be in the pipeline during this first quarter.

“Of course, we will be developing and we will be looking at the development of accounting and finance business related courses .

Not too diversified into other areas like IT or something totally different we will always be using accounting and finance as a basis,” he concluded.

FTMS International College standing on firm ground

As another respectable player in the accounting and finance field, FTMS International College aims to bring its ‘A’ game with its vision of becoming a worldwide premier education and traning provider specialising in accounting and business.

“FTMS International College Sarawak aims to provide excel­lent teaching, professional and entrepreneurial development; to create opportunities for graduates to build world class businesses and also to provide educational opportunities for individuals who wish to develop themselves,” outlined FTMS International College Sarawak chief executive officer David Chew in speaking to BizHive Weekly here.

“Financial raining Manage­ment School (FTMS) was first established in Kuching since 1998 by Eddie Wee, a chartered accountant in town who also runs an accounting and audit firm. FTMS was the first formal ACCA tuition provider in Kuching at that point in time, later on expanding into other academic courses,” he explained.

“All courses offered are ap­proved by the Ministry of Higher Education and accredited by Ma­laysian Qualification Agency, also recognised by local and overseas universities. All this while, FTMS is has been working closely with universities from the UK, however universities from Aus­tralia and other countries are also in our affiliation list.”

Chew highlighted that FTMS International College would con­tinue to develop more pathways for students to further their edu­cation and upgrade its academic quality, serving its niche in the ac­counting and business studies.

“We believe in serving our niche market with quality education. In this respect, we have around 500 active students at the moment,” he revealed.

Speaking on the group’s per­formance, so far it was going well with an average improvement in the range of 10 to 25 per cent an­nually, Chew said.

“The education industry in Kuching and in Sarawak as a whole is growing, and getting more competitive as the popula­tion is not high compared to other cities.

“However, I think the authority should look into the education industry landscape, particularly on cooperation between existing players to lift industry standards. In my personal opinion, uplifting existing players are important which will bring more positive impact and consequences to the society and all parties.

“Another aspect is education should truly bring positive development and im­pact to an in­dividual. It should help to build a better life for an individual. I guess, this is the value of an educationist. Thus, it should not just be solely focused on academic result compe­tition and commercial value.”

Chew was of the opinion that the tertiary education industry in this region was still very much offering the common discipline such as engineering, nursing, accounting and so forth. This, he said, was influenced by overall market demand.

“However, other specialisations can also start to develop a new market segment,” he explained. “To achieve this, other aspects have to be considered and taken care off too, such as improving on the population and other related industries.”

When asked on his thoughts about competition, Chew reiter­ated his stance that com­petition was ever present in any industry and showed a good sign of healthy growth.

“I think competition is always present in the industry. Of course with the changes of local universi­ties’ intake policies and overseas universities penetration into the market, competition level is increasing.

“However, I think there is nothing in this world that will stop growing and improving, and that includes competition. If something is not growing, it also means it is not healthy. The only way is to move forward along with the competition.”

Specifically for FTMS Inter­national College, though, Chew told BizHive Weekly that a future expansion of the student base was definitely in the growth plans. However, it was more crucial to maintain the quality and truly build a valuable individual in this industry.

“With this in mind, we are com­mitted to ensure all FTMS gradu­ates are readily employable when they enter the work force.

“We have been in Kuching for 15 years and with this track record, we will continue to develop our systems, human capital, facili­ties affiliations and so forth. We have made ourselves known as specialists in the accounting and business education field, and we will continue to move forward in this spectrum.”

When asked if he had plans to further increase its capacity, in­troduce new courses of open a new outlet in the near future, Chew replied with a resounding yes.

“Definitely a big yes on this. As mentioned earlier, the only con­stant is to move forward and grow and harmonise with the changes in the environment. In fact we are improving bit by bit every now and then, we are planning to further improve our existing facilities this year.

“We are indeed looking into a total expansion of the campus, which can be an extension of the existing city campus,” he gave as an example.

“As for new courses, we have plans to introduce new ones to meet market demand in the near future but we should be staying focused in our specialisation. We know what we do best and we will continue with it.”

Touching on the expansion of campuses into other geographical regions, Chew revealed that FTMS International College did have overall plans for this venture.

“However, the timing has to be right. We will continue to observe the environment and sense the opportunities as it arise.”