World class education opportunities up North

Malaysia’s tertiary education is world class according to the Second Education Minister Idris Jusoh. Malaysian universities are as good as those in UK, Australia and Germany in terms of quality. To back up his claim, he quoted the large number of foreign students coming to Malaysia for their tertiary education, conducted in English of course. So the quality must be good to attract foreign students to Malaysia.
 
The presence of foreign students is again quoted as a major factor for quality education ie world class. On this aspect, Malaysian universities would never be better than Singapore’s because the number of foreign students in the student population is much higher. Not only that, the lecturers and professors are mainly foreigners, or a large percentage, could be more than 50% in some faculties.
 
Malaysia needs to work harder to better its ranking if it wants to be better than Singapore by importing more foreign students and lecturers. They could also follow Singapore by giving no string attached scholarships to foreign students and pay the foreign lecturers salaries that they cannot refused. Singapore got a lot of money to spend on these foreign students and lecturers, so can Malaysia. Just throw more monies to the foreign lecturers and students and the ranking of Malaysian universities will definitely go up, like those in Singapore. And when there are more foreigners, the quality also goes up.
 
Singaporean students must now be eyeing a place in Malaysian universities. Malaysia just need to spend a bit more money to raise its ranking and Singaporean students would surely make a beeline to the high quality world class university education in Malaysia. And with the exchange rate so favourable, it would be an option that Singapore parents find very attractive. And Malaysia could also earn a lot of foreign exchange, increase its percentage of foreign students with Singaporean students, and thus improve the quality of education further. It would be a virtuous circus. Oops, I mean virtuous circle.
 
Malaysia would be happy and Singaporean students would also be happy. More foreign students and foreign lecturers equal to higher quality of education. It is a simple formula and so easy to achieve.