If you pay attention to internationalization in higher education, you’ve probably come across laudatory stuff about Malaysia, either as a source country for international students, or as a higher education hub.  But what you may not know is the extent to which Malaysian internationalization is a result of the country’s deep-seated racial divisions.

Malays are the majority in the country, but there is a very large Chinese minority, and a smaller Tamil one.  Since independence, Malays have kept control of politics by voting en bloc, but the Chinese have tended to be wealthier and better educated, and so have dominated commerce.  To remedy this, the ruling coalition created a series of affirmative action plans for Malays – in higher education, this meant the introduction of ethnic quotas.  Upon introduction, the proportion of new, entering students of Chinese descent at the flagship University of Malaya fell from 60 to 20%.

In response, the Chinese sent their kids to study abroad, which is how Malaysia became a major source country for international students.  Eventually, the government understood that chasing out talented young people was a bad idea, so they permitted the creation of a new, private university sector not subject to the quotas.  Private colleges sprung up at a furious rate.  Even though tuition was several times higher in the private sector than in the public one, the quota system ensured it would not lack for customers; by 2010, 58% of all students were in private universities.  Foreign institutions like Nottingham and Monash – usually in partnership with Malaysian-Chinese holding companies – began setting up branch campuses, as well.  Both domestic and foreign privates also started looking abroad for students.  Since Malaysia is a cheap place to study, in a moderate Islamic environment, it pulls in a lot of students from Iran and East Africa, and has thus become something of an education hub.

That said, the “prestige institutions” are still the five public sector research universities, with University of Malaya and Universiti Sains Malaysia at the top – this despite brutal overstaffing, unnecessary bureaucracy due to tight state control (government controls staffing, since professors are ultimately state employees), and active discrimination against non-Malay faculty.  But they have med schools and research budgets and that’s about all you need for prestige, so…

One interesting side effect of all this has been a vast increase in educational spending.  Infected by the Asia-wide “world-class university” mania, the government has been pumping ludicrous amounts of money into the higher education sector (proportionately, Malaysia’s research excellence initiative dwarfs its more famous German and Japanese cousins).  Add to that skyrocketing enrolments in the fee-heavy private system, and what you get is a country spending roughly 4% of its GDP on higher education – more than any other country in the world.

A heartening outcome, perhaps.  Just never forget it’s ultimately the product of some fairly unpleasant racial politics.