Foreign students in limbo as course accreditation revoked

Around 800 foreign students in Malaysia are in limbo after the Malaysian Qualifications Agency (MQA) revoked accreditation for eight courses at the private Limkokwing University of Creative Technology (LUCT), which also operates a number of branch campuses elsewhere in Asia and in Africa.

Foreign students at the private university in Selangor state near Kuala Lumpur said numerous bachelors, MBA and PhD courses at LUCT Malaysia have had accreditation revoked by the MQA after students had already commenced the course.

This appeared to be due to an “inability to maintain certain requirements and standards set by the relevant authorities”, Limkokwing students said at a press conference earlier this month.

Others had started courses at LUCT in Malaysia, with promises that accreditation would be forthcoming but students said they were about to graduate without courses being accredited by the Malaysian authorities responsible for maintaining university standards.

With some facing student visa renewals, coronavirus travel restrictions making it difficult to return home, and a new closure of universities announced by the Malaysian authorities this week, this could not have come at a worse time, students said.

On 10 May Prime Minister Muhyidden Yassin announced that all educational institutions in Malaysia would close until 6 June as part of a new ‘movement control order’ to stem a third wave of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Limkokwing, which says it has some 30,000 students from more than 165 countries, also has branch campuses in the United Kingdom, Indonesia, Cambodia, Sri Lanka, Botswana, Lesotho, Sierra Leone, eSwatini, Namibia, Nigeria and Uganda.

“As a professional educational institution, it is Limkokwing University's responsibility to ensure the accreditation of the courses. However, for the past few years... our efforts bear no fruit and we have only been given false promises and hollow assurances,” the students said.

“Without accreditation from MQA, our degrees are not recognised locally and internationally. This means that our tuition fees and time spent studying, which ranged from three to five years for different courses, have all been in vain,” said a foreign student at the press conference.

Limkokwing student representatives and alumni urged the university to expedite the accreditation process urgently. “If it cannot do that, we will push for compensation,” they said at the press conference organised by the opposition Democratic Action Party (DAP) and Malaysian United Democratic Alliance.

Some international students say their visas have expired but renewals have been delayed, which they believe has been due to the university’s generally slow administration.

Limkokwing tries to reassure students

Although students claimed some 20 courses were unaccredited, in a statement following the press conference, Limkokwing University said it has only been required to amend and resubmit eight programmes for accreditation after a recent MQA audit.

“We wish to reassure out students that there is no issue with the accreditation of the eight programmes, which we are confident will be put back on track,” it said, noting 98 academic programmes at the university are “fully registered by the Ministry of Higher Education in Malaysia and accredited by the MQA”.

“Accreditation of all our programmes is an ongoing process as they reach maturity and require scrutiny by MQA,” the statement said. “During the recent accreditation audit, the university was given 30 days to amend and resubmit eight of our programmes which we have completed.”

However, a student from Bangladesh who gave his name only as Chowdhury, enrolled at Limkokwing since 2019 for an MBA in project management, told local radio he had expected to graduate this year. This had been delayed because of the pandemic and visa issues.

“Then suddenly, we hear that the accreditation is revoked. We heard it in September so this thing is not new.”

He noted that with accreditation now revoked, neither his bachelor degree from LUCT nor his masters degree would be recognised in Malaysia or at home in Bangladesh. “I lost seven years (of study),” he said.

DAP member of parliament and former deputy education minister Teo Nie Ching said at the press conference the programme the students signed up for had been fully accredited but this was then revoked due to unsatisfactory quality of the course.

“From last year (since the revocation in September) until now, remedial action has not been taken or if they (Limkokwing University) have taken any, it’s not good enough to persuade MQA to give them full accreditation,” she said, urging the university to improve its standards.

MQA’s strict standards

Geoffrey Williams, a professor at the Malaysia University of Science and Technology and an expert on university governance, pointed to poor management and financial difficulties among the reasons private universities face accreditation problems.

They regularly “introduce new courses to attract more students and heavily promote them even before they are fully accredited by the MQA”, he told University World News, adding: “MQA auditing is very rigorous and MQA denies accreditation very often. Universities that fail accreditation processes are normally given a grace period of 30 days to remedy areas of noncompliance.

“Most respond quickly to MQA requirements and meet the minimum compliance criteria within this period,” Williams said.

However, it was rare for large numbers of courses or large student cohorts to be affected at the same time, he acknowledged.

Although many private universities were currently in financial difficulties, “COVID-19 is not really an issue in the audit process although it could be an issue in the performance outcome because cost-cutting has seriously affected many universities and this has a knock-on effect on quality and management as well as staff morale and loyalty in supporting the audit process,” he said.

Many other instances of non-recognition of degrees and certificates by authorities were settled out of court to avoid bad publicity, students said.

Many universities and colleges advertise courses for which they have only obtained provisional accreditation and must fulfil criteria for full accreditation. Others receive full accreditation only to have it revoked when audited by MQA during a regular five-year audit cycle.

This can leave students in a precarious position and “exposed to the inefficiency of the issuing college and university”, Williams said, noting that if the problem of non-accreditation “becomes systematic then it is very damaging for the reputation of all Malaysian private universities and will hit recruitment and retention of students, especially from overseas”.

MQA accreditation is also recognised by overseas universities and agencies for further study and credit transfer through mutual recognition agreements.

Foreign students in Malaysia “can continue until the end of the visa but when they try to renew, the course is not accredited so it can affect their renewal”, Williams said.

Compensation mooted

A Malaysian LUCT alumnus Amir Fakhri, who attended the press conference, said he took a course in 2017 at the university which had been unable to obtain accreditation since it was established in 2014, and he had to transfer to another institution to get a recognised degree. “But for those who have already graduated (from LUCT), they must be compensated.”

Fakhri said non-accredited programmes should not be advertised or marketed “anywhere in the world” to unsuspecting international students.

DAP’s Teo told local radio: “The Minister of Higher Education can actually instruct the affected students to be shifted to another programme that is accredited by MQA in the same institution, or they (students) can also be shifted to similar programmes at another higher education institution that is, of course, accredited, and any cost must be borne by the higher education institution. This is something that the Ministry of Higher Education can do to protect the interests of students.”

In a high-profile case this year, two graduates of Monash University medical programme in Kuala Lumpur lodged a lawsuit in February in a Malaysian high court against Monash University Malaysia, its pro vice-chancellor, and the head of the university’s school of medicine for “negligence, misrepresentation and breach of contract”, for conferring a degree that was not recognised for them to practise medicine in Malaysia.

Amardas Singh Sandu and Liew Mee Yew, who completed their course late last year, were seeking damages of MYR1 million (US$242,300) in lost income after they found they did not qualify for a two-year hospital internship after their degree, as Monash Malaysia had failed to gazette the programme with relevant authorities.

They had enrolled in 2016 for the five-year MBBS programme, along with 120 others that year, but the course was converted to the Bachelor of Medical Science and MD, considered of higher value, which requires an extra research paper.

Monash said in a statement on 23 March that the issue had been resolved and the course was now registered. “All the relevant students and our Bachelor of Medical Science and Doctor of Medicine (MD) degree graduates have already begun to register for their housemanship [internship],” it said.