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Host Alex Usher speaks with Chang Da Wan about the evolution of strategic planning in Malaysian higher education, from decades-long national development plans to the newly released Higher Education Blueprint (2026–2035). They explore how a deeply embedded planning culture has shaped the system—and whether it has truly delivered on its ambitions.
The conversation examines the blueprint’s structure, including its ten policy pillars, the continued influence of neoliberal governance and performance metrics, and concerns about limited transparency and top-down decision-making. They also discuss major policy questions around pre-university pathways, equity, and the complexities of managing multiple admission systems.
The episode further looks at emerging priorities such as student wellbeing, the challenges of measuring non-academic outcomes, and the uncertain role of technology in future planning. Chang Da Wan reflects on what may be missing from the current blueprint—and what the next generation of reforms will need to address about the purpose and future of universities in Malaysia.
👉 Episode Links:
👉 Episode Links:
- Malaysia Higher Education Blueprint (2026–2035)
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Creators and Guests
What is The World of Higher Education?
The World of Higher Education is dedicated to exploring developments in higher education from a global perspective. Join host, Alex Usher of Higher Education Strategy Associates, as he speaks with new guests each week from different countries discussing developments in their regions.
Produced by Tiffany MacLennan and Samantha Pufek.
Alex Usher: Hi everyone. I'm Alex Usher, and this is The World of Higher Education Podcast.
Malaysia is one of those countries where higher education is almost always in the news. Partly it's because Malaysia has for many years sought to use higher education to speed up economic development, but it also has to do with the government's decision 55 years ago to use a complicated matriculation system to reserve a large number of places in public universities for what are known as Bumiputeras, that is ethnic Malays and other indigenous peoples.
On the one hand, that's been the spur of the creation of a dynamic private higher education sector geared towards serving the non-Bumi population, mainly, but not exclusively, Malaysian Chinese. But given how presti and higher education works, this alternative has never quite been seen as equal. And almost every year there are stories of anger as Chinese students are denied entry into top public university programs.
A few weeks ago, the Malaysian government issued a new blueprint for higher education for the next decade. It's an ambitious document containing 10 pillars or themes that should guide the system through to 2035. And given the complexity of the country's higher education policy environment, it should be a pretty consequential piece of policy making.
With me today to discuss this is Chang Da Wan, a professor of education at Taylor's University in Selangor, Malaysia. We covered a lot of ground in this interview from the Malaysian approach to strategic planning — seemingly quite top down in this case, to the choice of the 10 pillars as this plan's priority areas, to the government's decision to pass responsibility for matriculation from the Ministry of Education to the Ministry of Higher Education, and what that might mean for the country's two track admission system.
It's a lot to get through in half an hour, but somehow we managed. So without further ado, let's hear from Chang Da.
Chang Da, welcome to the show. I wanna start today's episode by talking about the culture of strategic planning in Malaysia. You know, I, I worked there maybe 15 years ago and it just, it always struck me how in every office, in government, you know, every unit, every subunit had its own strategic plan prominently displayed. And when you went into the bookstores, there's just huge parts of the business section that are devoted to strategic planning. So, you know, this new blueprint doesn't come outta thin air, it comes out of a very long tradition of planning, which I guess is somewhat unique, I would say, even in Asia where planning is, is more in vogue.
How did Malaysia get that way and does it make the country any better at actually achieving goals?
Chang Da Wan: Great. Thank you, Alex, for having me on this show. I'm glad to share a little bit on that. I think that whole culture of planning, we probably needs to go back into history to look at over the last 60 over years of Malaysia as a nation. That culture of planning has been very much in place even before Malaysia gain its independence from the British, right?
The, the first official document, the first Malayan five year plan, was actually launched in 1956. That was the year before Malaya got its independence from the British in 1957. And subsequently, Malaysia has never failed to have its five years development plan one after another. And the most recent Malaysia plan, 13 Malaysia plan was just launched at the end of last year. So that is a, a long history of economic planning. And subsequently, that has also been seen in many other areas of development in Malaysia, particularly in education as well as in higher education. In the context of education, that planning seems to be slightly different from the overall economic planning. So in education, typically in the Malaysian situation, it always begin with a report or a cabinet report, right? And that leads from those reports, it will usually leads into an action plan. When the Ministry of Higher Education was first established in 2004, what happens almost immediately after the establishment of the new ministry was a committee was put together to basically review the state of higher education and to make recommendation to the government. And what is interesting is that that report was subsequently turned into the National Higher Education strategic plan. That was launched in 2007, and it's supposed to be that strategic plan that is going to guide Malaysia's higher education development all the way to 2020. What is interesting in that plan, I think myself and some of my colleagues have argued that that plan is actually most instrumental in shaping what we see in higher education today. That plan has a lot of influence from the new public management perspective and concepts put into higher education. That is also the time where the first document that we see, the explicit influence of new liberal policies that has been put in place for higher education. As that document was undergoing a midterm review in 2013, that was the time where the Ministry of Higher Education was merged with the Ministry of Education after every shuffle of the cabinet by the then Prime Minister, Najib. And what happens then was as the team was reviewing the strategic plan for higher education, the Ministry of Education, which the care of schools, have just launched the Malaysian Education Blueprint, the 2013 to 2025 blueprint. Hence, I would always say that the higher education blueprint in 2025 was an accidental document.
It was a document that was repackaged that has a lot of extension and continuation from the strategic plan, taking a different structure to coincide with the school blueprint. The follow up in that is what we have just seen, the launch of the Malaysian Higher Education Blueprint 2026 to 2035.
Alex Usher: And as you say, that first blueprint, the 2015 to 2025 blueprint, that's partially a continuation of the national strategy from 2007, but it's also a little bit of shift too, right? Like What, if any, were the shifts that happened between the 2007 document and the 2015 document?
Chang Da Wan: I would say the biggest shift is in terms of the structure of the document whereas the 2007 strategic plan looks at higher education more in a narrower scope without thinking about the how it connects to, for example, the school sector. So the strategy plan is much more numbers driven. So it has very clear indicators of wanting how many Malaysian universities to be in the top 50 in which ranking, how many other universities in the top a hundred and so on and so forth.
And, and one, one of the key features that continue to be seen is we continue to see between the strategic plan in 2007 and the 2015 higher education blueprint, is that the continuation of neoliberal approach to higher education as well as a more intensifying new public management concepts that is brought back into this.
Alex Usher: So it's interesting you talk about neoliberalism because usually when you talk about neoliberalism in higher education, what you're talking about is government steers and, and universities manage. But of course, it's a fair bit of micromanagement, I have always found, in the Malaysian system, you know, the budgetary system is still, it's not block grants quite to two institutions.
You know, in government still has a big say in, in the way institutions spend their money. So let me ask a question about how this blueprint was created. Was there a lot of public consultation or is this a really top down exercise?
Chang Da Wan: I think I would, I would say it is still a very much a top down exercise. It's a very top-down exercise. Because first of all, it begins with the need to have a new blueprint. And if you look carefully at the kind of questions that was being asked there was a public survey that took place, I think in 2024. In the middle of 2024. They basically ask the public what's your opinion, how successful the blueprint has been. But in terms of the approach to in public consultations it seems to me is, is very similar to the public consultation that was done in 2015. And in actual fact, the consultation for 2015 was not done by the blueprint team. It was done by the review of the strategic plan, the team that was reviewing the strategic plan that was going on at that point.
So you, I mean, one can argue if it's a public survey of 1,800 respondents, how representative is that? And I am actually disappointed by the lack of showing what exactly has taken place in the last blueprint. What are the achievements? What are the areas that has been short of achieving the targets?
So if you look at the current blueprint, you only see one page to tell you only one question from the public survey. How satisfied are you with the overall performance of the last blueprint? And the highest number of category is actually satisfactory is about 44% of, of that, right? So that to me is, is perhaps one of the area where is not very clear except for the numbers of people who have, in a way, been in form of being consulted.
I mean, it's, it's quite impressive numbers of 6,000 over people that they have met in different town halls or, or public consultations. But again, to what extent are those translated into the actual development of the blueprint?
Alex Usher: So the strategic plan has 10 pillars, which you know, is a lot. I do strategic plans and I gotta say, I don't think I'd ever put one out that has 10 pillars, 'cause if you've got 10 priorities, you probably have no priorities. But from your perspective, which of the three or four that you see as being particularly important? And also are there maybe one or two that you think are missing?
Chang Da Wan: I wouldn't say it is, it's which one is more important or, or, or which one is missing. I would just point to two points about, about the pillars. I think the first point is that what is interesting is what has been taken away from the last 10 shifts and what has been brought into the new 10 shifts. So there's only one changes that is the, the pillar related to globalized online learning that was taken away. And what has been replaced is the planetary health and sustainability. Well, I can understand why planetary health and sustainability has been put there. It just puzzled me as we move into such a environment where there's so much of disruption coming from technology and that whole pillar that was supposed to focus on technology has been taken away and been sort of embedded into different other pillars.
Yeah, so that to me is a big surprise, I have to say. And the second point I would want to commend is the fact that you continue to have this 10 different pillars that supposed to represent different areas of higher education, but having it in such a important document will create one problem that is the lack of connectivity across pillars.
One of the big challenge is that we realize that if you want to change something, for example, you want to make an amendment to the law that for example, will restore institutional autonomy. That change is not just a mere change of the law, that change in the area of governance and law has implication on the finance of the university, has implication on the staffing and the salary structure of the universities. And I wonder how in a strategic plan where you have 10 different pillars, each with its own sort of indicators on development, how is that going to play out? Especially on important structural development that is required for the higher education system.
Alex Usher: We're gonna take a short break. We'll be right back.
And we're back. Chang Da, I wanna ask you about one thing that was not really in the document, but it was certainly there at the time, I mean, it's not considered one of the pillars, but it was a big deal when the document was launched, and that has to do with the way that the the higher education ministry has now been given responsibility for the year prior to higher education, that is the matriculation year. Now, you know, this has been a big deal in, in Malaysia for a long time because there are two matriculation systems, right? one that it explicitly favors Bumiputera, which is Malay and, and other indigenous ethnic groups. And another, which tends to cater to the Chinese and Indian population.
What's going on here? Like, does this signal that maybe we're gonna only have one matriculation system soon?
Chang Da Wan: Yup, you, you definitely have pointed out an area that is, is very much controversial to the context of Malaysia due to the whole issue of ethnicity that has been at play. But there's a few things that we need to unpack to understand this in, in a, in a more coherent way. First of all, the mention of the move of that pre university year from the purview of the Ministry of Education to the Ministry of Higher Education was actually first mentioned in the 13 Malaysia plan last year. It was just a mention with no elaboration in that economic plan. That elaboration was followed by the announcement by the Prime Minister at the launch of the blueprints. So the two blueprints was launched together by the Prime Minister. And there was a mention of moving that one year of pre university education from Ministry of Education to Higher Education.
But if you read carefully in the, in both blueprints. It's absolutely silent about it. So that's the, the first thing at this moment is not clear what is going to happen because it's not as simple as just the move of the matriculation examination. Actually, we are talking about three different systems of pre universities that enable Malaysian student to go into public universities. And of the three, two of these pathways has an ethnic quota, one of which is, there is a, what we call the Malaysian matriculation system. So this is a, this is used to be run by the Ministry of Education, which is boarding school facilities that leads students to sit for the matriculation exam and that will qualify them to go into the public university.
The second avenue that has any quota is what we call the foundation program in the public universities. So I think 18 of the 20 public universities have their foundation program for specific undergraduate programs. Some of these are open to uh, means that they are open, means that students can sign on and do a foundation in science and that enable them to then go on to any other science related undergraduate program in any public universities.
And the third, which is the public examination, the equivalence of A levels in the British system, which is one and a half years preparation that leads to an examination called STPM. Traditionally, it do not have an any quota, and therefore it has always been seen to be taken mostly by the Chinese and the Indians and the non Malays. But that is not necessarily true anymore.
This whole issue has sort of evolved into a sort of a class issue rather than an ethnicity issues because 70% of students who sit for STPM comes from the bottom 40% of the economics structure of the country.
Alex Usher: So the fact that the government is trying to take into this whole you know, this area of, of policy under the higher education wing, does it signify that, that they want to change this? Or does it signify that they don't want to change it? I mean, I'm, I'm sort of curious you know, because it is such a, a sore point and has been for decades, right? The, the question of who gets to go into public universities in Malaysia, I think that goes back to the uh, riots in the late sixties and early seventies and, and the whole notion of, of reservations for Bumi's. But you know, are, are we likely to see change or is the point of these measures to try and freeze the system?
Chang Da Wan: It's a good question. I think there's two levels of this where now it has become complicated. When, ideally is the Ministry of Higher Education who should be in charge of the policies on how do you synchronize and work with a system that has multiple pathways. Ideally that part of policy should rest fully in the hands of the Ministry of Higher Education. The problem now is when these pre university programs are also moved to be under the Ministry of Higher Education. There now has another question. Who is going to run the metriculation colleges? They used to be part of the Ministry of Education. Teachers were hired from the public system through the Ministry of Education to run, to teach in these institutions, these colleges, and now you're gonna move them into a different ministry. So that's another big question mark. And then the, the bigger question mark, with the public exam STPM is, that is actually run, the examination is run by an independent body, and the teaching of those programs are done in public schools. Or what we call six form colleges. That is used to be under the Ministry of Education as well. And therefore it's, a, it's a bit of a challenge in terms of its implementation at this point. When the government announced that they gonna move under the Ministry of Higher Education, does that include the running of those programs is also under the Ministry of Education? And at this point, nobody is able to give an answer on how that is going to happen.
Alex Usher: Got it. Uh, One other thing that I thought was really interesting in the document was that it talks about measuring success by measuring student wellbeing. And I get, I got the impression through a quick search that there are other areas of public policy in Malaysia where wellbeing is something that is measured. I'm not sure exactly how, but you know, as, as a way of policy success. Is that new in higher education that student wellbeing is a, is in effect a, a policy indicator. And how do you think they'll be measuring it from here on? Or how have they been measuring it if they don't do it yet, how do you think they'll do it in future?
Chang Da Wan: One shift that can be seen in this particular blueprint is there is an increased emphasis on the notion of wellbeing. I think that's a good thing, but I'm also glad that the indicator was not spelled out. Because the problem with many of these blueprints is when it becomes, when there is an indicator, then you might lose the meaning behind it because it becomes a very narrow kind of indicator that it defeats the meaning of what wellbeing it's all about. But what is interesting relating to that is a reintroduction of this concept called I-C-G-P-A. I-C-G-P-A was a concept introduced by the former Minister of Higher Education after the launch of the last blueprint.
Alex Usher: CGPA is combined grade point average. What does the I stand for?
Chang Da Wan: Precisely. The, I stands for integrated. Typically in the university, the CGPA shows the academic performance of the students. So the introduction of the I-C-G-P-A is supposed to come to go beyond the academic domain, to include domain like patriotism, to include domain like spirituality, social, soft skills, and, and so on and so forth.
And one of the big issue conceptual challenges to that is how can you measure patriotism of the student? How can you measure values that are, for example, honesty and all that, right? So it becomes a, a measurement challenge to the whole concept. And eventually it was scrapped in 2018 when the new government came on board and said, this is rubbish, we don't want this anymore, and then it was thrown out the window. But what is interesting was that made a return to this particular document. And it still remain unclear how is that going to be measured?
Alex Usher: I wanna look 10 years in the future. We're gonna invite you back on the show in 2036, you know, to, to see what the effect of this blueprint has been. What do you think it'll be like, will we look back on this document as a significant policy marker, or no?
Chang Da Wan: I think it's going to be consequential. I would not wait until the next 10 years to start thinking of it. I would be a little bit more concerned and I think there is a need for additional thinking that needs to go to make sure this blueprint remains relevant even for the next five years. Right? Three areas I think is, is crucial that this blueprint not only remain as a blueprint, there's three additional aspect that we need to put in place, these three different areas of critical questions we need to concurrently address as we also look into the blueprint.
The first is, I think there's a need to seriously ask ourself how will university education change in the next year or so, and with, with technology like AI and all that, right? How prepared is the universities for that kind of change? Are we going to see at this means of the university, will all the professors be replaced by machine? The students still see the value of going into, higher education and going to universities. I think one of the big issue is there's a lack of a, a future scenario kind of projection in the blueprint, and that is very much needed because it gives an impression that this whole blueprint is premise on a linear status quo kind of development. How we have developed, how we have moved over the last 10 years, this will be the same trajectory we are going with.
Alex Usher: Mm-hmm.
Chang Da Wan: But we know that that is not necessarily the case.
Alex Usher: And it's interesting just, just, given how many Asian countries are focusing so heavily on artificial intelligence and, and change in education right now, it is a bit of a surprising omission. What do you think the next blueprint will have to deal with? Like, what are the challenges up to 2046? Are there things that were left out this time that will have to be dealt with then?
Chang Da Wan: And, and I, I would say that if the university is still there in 2036, right? I think the next blueprint got to ask this fundamental question, which is my second point that is, what is the role and purpose of the university? Right? We need to be critical to ask that question because in a changing world, if we assume that the university remains relevant as an institution for the society, then we need to ask what is that role and how that role will change.
And that leads me to my third point is that I also hope to see is that, we need a lot more room. You've got to understand that this is a national document, right? We are talking about a sector with three to 400 different institutions, 20 public universities, about 60 private universities, and then you've got a lot more other institutions between them, right? To what extent are we providing room for these institutions to even diversify and to tailor and adapt their role in terms of providing higher education to the students, in terms of serving the different communities, in terms of fulfilling the very purpose of their existence as in higher education institutions. And I think that room for institutions to navigate within this very utopian like national policy is going to be crucial. 'Cause if there isn't room for that, then we are going to see a convergence of institutions to become the university that is only one kind of models that we are looking at. And that is going to, be even more consequential to the development of uh, higher education moving forward.
Alex Usher: Chang Da, thanks so much for joining us today,
Chang Da Wan: Thank you.
Alex Usher: And it just remains for me to thank our excellent producers, Sam Pufek and Tiffany MacLennan, and you are readers and listeners for joining us. If you have any comments or questions about today's episode or suggestions for future episodes, please don't hesitate to get in contact at podcast@higheredstrategy.com.
Join us next week when we have a rare double act joining us, it's Dan Collier and Michael Kofoed of the University of Memphis and University of Tennessee, Knoxville, respectively. They'll be joining us to talk about the record so far of the Trump administration. Bye for now.