UCSI professor Tajuddin Rasdi said fully homegrown private universities were made to pay huge amounts in taxes which could be used to address the race imbalance in privately-operated universities.
“I know of one university which has to pay RM12 million in taxes a year. “If there is a problem of race imbalance then one of the areas we can look at is to convert this tax into scholarships for Malay students,” Tajuddin said.
He was referring to an exclusive FMT report yesterday, in which Abdul Razak Baginda, who heads the Centre for Global Affairs Malaysia (Icon), warned that the proliferation of private universities could bring about a widening in the country’s racial divide.
Razak urged the government to institute measures that would help poor students of all races enrol in private institutions of higher learning, which he said gave education of a higher quality compared to that of public universities.
Tajuddin however said racism in Malaysia was caused by several factors including how religion was taught, “political dramas” and the lackadaisical attitude of some authorities when it came to taking action against extremists of a certain race and religion.
As for universities, he said, racism was a small issue but an issue nonetheless.
“For example, in my 27 years of teaching in public universities, I have never heard of a non-Malay vice-chancellor.
“Also, we have very big mosques in public universities but you don’t have ecumenical centres which can be used by people of several different faiths.
“I also only ever remember celebrating Hari Raya but not other celebrations like Christmas, Chinese New Year, or Deepavali,” Tajuddin said, adding that even if the other students formed a minority, it was only fair that if you celebrated one festival, you celebrated all.
“Otherwise, don’t celebrate any festival at all.”
Tajuddin also noted that Malaysians had the tendency to look upon private universities as companies only out to make money. He stressed however that private universities played a big role towards the nation’s development as well.
“If private universities do not exist, then the government would have to spend billions to build more public universities.
“Private universities should be looked upon as playing a very important secondary role towards providing an enlightened citizenry as well as an educated workforce.”