Notice of Retraction: APEX University: Is it the Malaysian Way Forward?

Malaysia is on the road for a new education revolution. The aspiration is to put the Malaysian education on the global map by transforming the tertiary education into a center of academic excellence. Timeframe: 2010. It’s vision: regional center for higher education learning that focuses on finance and banking, biotechnology, information and communication technology (ICT) multimedia content development, advanced manufacturing and industrial design. End result: human capital with first class mentality. First introduced by Mahathir Mohamad in 1991, Vision 2020 is developed further by Abdullah Ahmad Badawi with the notion of Malaysian Nobel Laureates and Malaysia as the education hub for international scholars by 2057. With that in mind, the National Higher Education Action Plan (NHEAP) was launched in 2007 with five critical agendas accompanied by five pillars to strengthen all Higher Education Institutions (HEIs). Prior to that, four research universities (RU) were established in 2006 in a move to highlight the importance of research in Malaysian Academia. An APEX (Accelerated Programme for Excellence) University was further created in 2008, hoped to be Malaysian’s first world class university. With this Malaysia hopes to bump its universities up to the Top 100 in THE-QS world university ranking (THE-QS) by 2010. Due to rapid changes in the Malaysian education landscape, not to mention the high expectation posed on the academia, issues and complications may arise as Malaysia is venturing forward into shifting the mindset of not only Malaysians but also the world that Malaysia too has an equal footing in the global education arena. The challenges faced should be anticipated prior to APEX implementation and strategies should be put in place in line with problem identification. The impact this education revolution should be carefully weighed and studied especially the foreseeable gap of education quality and funding allocation in APEX, research and other local HEIs. The success of this new aspiration requires commitment, effort, collaboration and cooperation from all, not only HEIs and the Ministry of Higher Education (MOHE) but also encompassing the government and corporate sectors.