YY: There are three roles that we are actually looking into: number one is student exchange, mobility programmes and summer programmes both inbound and outbound; the other one is partnerships, and that of course involves all the legal agreements and visits; and then the third one is looking at our own international students at home, their visa process and their study environment in the university.

The PIE: How many of your students go abroad?

YY: This is a big challenge because for the past three years we’ve had very little funding from the universities. Our students total about 25,000 but 2,500, partly because we are the national university. Out of the 25,000, the ones that go abroad for the undergraduate, that would be about 300-400, but for the postgraduate the numbers are slightly bigger because they have a different kind of funding.

The PIE: Where do they go?

YY: Most of them would go probably to the Asian side, as much as they want to go to the States or Canada or Europe, the cost is very very high.  There are a few faculties which go to the Netherlands or Sweden but because they have a reciprocal exchange. Other than that most would go to ASEAN countries, and of course Japan, Hong Kong and Korea.

“We attract the students who study humanities, sciences or people who have specific areas who want to learn about indigenous people”

The PIE: Are the international students at your university also mostly from within Asia?

YY: Those who study full term, most of them come from Islamic countries – Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Yemen, Syria, Libya – but we do have a huge number from our neighbouring partners, Brunei and Indonesia, partly because of the language. And then we have a very small number from Japan and China.

The PIE: How does the university attract set itself apart from other study destinations in the region?

YY: Every year, for the last seven years, we have conducted two summer programmes that attract international students to come and learn about Malaysia. Number one is the indigenous community; number two is the sustainable, tropical heritage.

For the course studying the indigenous community, what happens is we attract the students who study humanities, sciences or people who have specific areas who want to learn about indigenous people. These students come mainly from Mexico because they have a group of indigenous people there, from Australia where they’ve got the aboriginals, from Turkey, from Kazakhstan as well, so quite a number of them. These two programmes are three weeks – one where the students will experience learning in campus and two weeks learning in the field.

The other programme which is a tropical sustainable heritage, it is about sustaining the environment. Again it is a week of lectures, learning about geological factors, sustainability environment in Malaysia, what are the things that have been done and then the second week we will take them to Langkawi.

We will take them to the mango plantations, we will take them to the forest park where they will learn about stones and how they are going to maintain the environment. They will be there for five days, living with the community.

“We will take them to the mango plantations, we will take them to the forest park”

These two particular programmes have credit bearing to it. They are supposed to come up with travel log journals so they really have to describe what they have learnt and compare that to their own indigenous people in their country and in every session that they attend, every day they would have presentations and workshops they would need to conduct, so they have to use a creative way on how to explain what they have learnt, they are going to be evaluated by the professors there.

The PIE: How does credit transfer work within ASEAN?

YY: We have what we call the ASEAN University Network to promote students to go to ASEAN countries and get their credits transferred. ASEAN has a committee that looks at the quality management framework for the credit transfer. Each university sends their syllabus in English to the committee and they will evaluate it and see how it is similar.

Once it gets endorsed, all these courses are being put on the website under the ASEAN University Network so then the students look at these courses and then they go back to the faculty and they say “I will go to Indonesia” for instance, these are the topics I want to take, faculty will look at it and then they can get the endorsement. That’s how credit transfer is being done in ASEAN.

The PIE: Do you know how many programmes are on that list at the moment?

YY: Huge, programmes. There are two tracks where we allow university credit transfer. One is using the ASEAN University network. Another one is what we call ASEAN International Mobility for Students, where we involve all ten ASEAN countries plus Korea, Japan and Hong Kong. Korea has just got on board, Japan got on board last year. So how that works, we get the partners to look, depending on the areas of specialisation for the university. For instance in the National University our area of specialisation and focus for transfer credit has always been language, and of course economics and management.

“ASEAN has a committee that looks at the quality management framework for the credit transfer”

The PIE: So you speak about indigenous people in Malaysia, what is the environment like for indigenous people in Malaysia at the moment?

YY: I would say it is very progressive, we do have now indigenous people who have high posts in the organisations or government sectors, but it depends on the community. There are a few tribes who are very very shy, partly because the language they use is different to ours and then they are nomads, they move from one place to another because of their beliefs so to change their mindset it is very difficult.

But there are also communities that are open, where they actually stay in their own particular village, some really embrace their natural or traditional way of doing things but some have actually moved. So those who have moved from their traditional way of living, they actually send their children to school, like for instance in Selangor, we have a tribe where they live in modern houses, but they are very much in their own village.