Now everyone can study

ATI College and Curtin Malaysia cash in as Australia tightens student visa rules

Although they didn’t plan it that way, Australia’s tightening of student’s visa rules to weed out job seekers and migrants is a blessing to ATI College and Curtin University Malaysia. Last month, both signed a collaboration agreement to launch a one-year master degree course in international business. The first intake of 40 students mostly from China is expected in July. The next in February. This collaboration has brought Malaysia into focus as a centre of good and relatively cheap higher education. And this has prompted ATI College to change its tagline to “Now everyone can study”.

The degree is issued by Curtin and conducted by ATI in Kota Kinabalu by ten  lecturers from Curtin and ATI. The fee of RM39,000 is less than a third of what students will have to pay in Australia for a similar course: A$30,750 (RM96,370). Not forgetting travel and living costs, health and other study expenses. These would add up to about an annual RM95,000. Australia’s recent student visa requirement for foreign students to show savings of about RM95,000 has put a damper on them.

Wong Khen Thau, ATI’s executive chairman, stresses that money is not a hindrance to education in Malaysia as school fees and living costs are low. Study loans and scholarships are easily available from the government.

The weakness of the ringgit which has fallen to a 26-year low against the US dollar and other major currencies has made study in Malaysia even more attractive to foreign students. There are 10 foreign  university campuses from Australia, Britain, China and Ireland in Malaysia since Australia’s Monash University set up the first foreign campus in Malaysia 26 years ago. Together with 100 private Malaysian universities, they offer students higher education of comparable quality to their home countries.

There are about 250,000 foreign students in Malaysia. Students from China make up about 50,000. Chinese students find Malaysia linguistically and culturally compatible because ethnic Chinese form about a quarter of Malaysia’s 34m population, the second largest ethnic group after the Malays.

ATI College has an agreement with Beijing’s Future Education Group to recruit Chinese students for the master degree course. They are also collaborating to introduce Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning and other technical courses.