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‘We are looking at inclusiveness’

Article - October 3, 2011
Dato’ Saifuddin Abdullah, Malaysia’s Deputy Minister of Higher Education, discusses Malaysia’s views on entrepreneurship
GRADUATES ARE ENCOURAGED TO LAUNCH THEIR OWN ENTERPRISES

What makes education in Malaysia unique?

As far as higher education is concerned, the fact that we inherited the British system helps. Another factor is our use of English as the medium. Most private universities tend to use English throughout and public universities use Malay as the principal language but many subjects, especially technical ones, are in English.  Almost all of our postgraduate studies are in English. Thirdly, in terms of cost it is very affordable and competitive. Fourthly, foreign universities have come here to start their own branch campus, including Nottingham and Newcastle in the U.K.
 

‘SOCIAL ENTRE-PRENEURSHIP: SOLVING SOCIAL PROBLEMS, THE ENVIRONMENT AND OVERTLY USING A BUSINESS MODEL TO ENSURE SUSTAINABILITY’

It is widely recognized that entrepreneurialism is one of the keys to a knowledge-based society. What is the Ministry doing in this respect?

There are three ways to look at entrepreneurship. Firstly, entrepreneurship as in entrepreneurial mindset. We look at entrepreneurship as extra curricular work, or seen as soft skills. We’ve come up with an instrument to measure soft skills; they are seen as intangible so often they are difficult to analyze. Then you have entrepreneurship as in business. We find that a very small number of our graduates become entrepreneurs, less than 5%. This is much lower than developed countries. We need to do more to turn universities into a training ground to excite and motivate people to do business.

The third point is social entrepreneurship. This is important in the context of the new economic model. We are looking at inclusiveness. There are many terms being used now, solidarity of the economy, social business, but to some of us working on social entrepreneurship it has a very simple definition: solving social problems, the environment and overtly using a business model to ensure sustainability.

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