A low family income should not come in the way of Malaysian students pursuing an education. Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak said that the Government ensured that 90 per cent of education was subsidised through aid or loans.
Najib has long championed the idea that young people looking to better themselves should not be held back by a lack of resources. The National Higher Education Fund Corporation (PTPTN) therefore subsidises a large chunk of the total cost of education.
Put simply, it means that no matter what a student’s circumstances, he or she should not be put off from higher education by its cost.
The Prime Minister’s message was that the BN Government is there to support everyone from all backgrounds in the pursuit of developing themselves and the country.
“Loans from the National Higher Education Fund Corporation (PTPTN) provide an access to higher studies for many poor students,” he said on Friday at the launch of a new programme at Universiti Teknologi Mara (UiTM)
“The BN government will continue to uphold and provide better facilities in the education sector for the people in the future.”
He stressed that education provided the key to social mobility.
As Malaysia leaps forward to fully developed nation status with a highly skilled, knowledge-based economy, it is the country’s education system that will provide young people the opportunity to move ahead – whether they are in the inner city schools or the kampung.
Najib said rural children had experienced many changes through the setting up of UiTM, which now had 200,000 students.
But he emphasised that the evolution of education in Malaysia was not a battle that could be won overnight.
“It has to be over the long term, and the results can be seen today. This is the government of today, never tired of championing the people regardless of race,” he said.
This reality is of course a long way from the populist promises of the Opposition who have loudly proclaimed the PTPTN should be abolished to make way for entirely free education, paid for by oil revenues (a national asset).
Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim has made populist promises at his ceramahs, but he has yet to explain just how he plans to achieve these goals without creating a bigger deficit and the need for even more taxes on the rakyat.
Indeed it was Anwar, during his tenure as Deputy Prime Minister in the 1990s, who helped to push through the PTPTN precisely because of the importance of expanding tertiary education.
At the time, he specifically rejected providing cost-free tertiary education because of the potential impact on the budget. Instead he fought for a solution where loans would be underwritten by the Government and carried by the students.
It is not a perfect model, and the Government has shown a keen willingness to evolve it further.
But to suggest that there is a magic solution by abolishing this model altogether is an Opposition leader’s pipedream, not that of a serious Government.