“The sooner you start saving for your child’s future education the better because you’ll be able to make that money grow,” said StandardFA’s director of practice and advisory management, Lee Khee Chuan.

Speaking to FMT, Lee said parents should think of time as an asset. With a longer period of saving, he said, parents would accumulate more money and could earn more from compound interest.

PTPTN’s deputy chief executive officer for policy and operations, Mastura Mohd Khalid, said in a recent speech that parents should think of opening an SSPN-i Plus account for each child as soon as that child is born.

Lee agreed with Mastura, saying parents should avoid having to burden their children with debts incurred from study loans.

He said there were many options for investment towards tertiary education.

“If it’s in insurance, then you can use the education plan which has a tax relief for education purposes, but you’ll have to watch out because not 100% of that money will go into the investment account.”

According to him, one advantage of putting money in education insurance is that the premium will be paid by the insurance company if a parent dies or suffers a disability.

“Another favourite option is to put the money in unit trusts, where more of the money will go into investment.”

He said parents could also invest in property, but cautioned that properties could be harder to convert to cash.

“It’s risky,” he said. “You’ll have to ensure that you’ll be able to sell the property by the time the child is about to go to university.

“Also, if there’s a recession, then you may end up having a problem getting the cash.”

In December last year, Deputy Higher Education Minister Mary Yap Kain Ching was quoted as saying that 1,574,700 borrowers had failed to service their PTPTN loans. The total amount involved was RM32.07 billion.

The defaulters have been listed in the Central Credit Reference Information System and will face difficulty getting other loans.