KUALA LUMPUR – Higher Education Minister Datuk Seri Khaled Nordin has been criticised for his apparent lack of sympathy for standing by Universiti Malaya’s (UM) ‘zero-balance policy’ in its tuition fee collection.
The University of Malaya Association of New Youth (Umany) said Khaled agreeing with the policy showed his lack of sympathy for the students’ hardships in paying their fees.
“Even if the claim that a small percentage of students would be affected by the policy is true, they should not be abandoned and should be given alternatives, which UM has not publicly announced yet,” it said in a statement today.
“It is clearly shown that the minister has chosen the university’s financial advancement over the students’ ease of education, failing to fulfil his responsibility to future generations.
“Umany wishes to restate its stance that the ‘zero-balance policy’ must be abolished, for equal rights to education that our future successors of this country deserve, for an educational system that does not discriminate against the poor, and for steadier educational pathways that should be guaranteed by the government.”
The policy mandates students to settle their fees before being allowed to register for their next semester.
Khaled told Dewan Rakyat yesterday that the policy only affects less than 4% of its students, and that it does not burden the students as a whole was untrue.
He added that the policy does not involve 96% of students, especially borrowers from the National Higher Education Fund Corp (PTPTN), government scholarship holders, and those from the B40 income bracket.
The minister said the university viewed the move as necessary, as some students deliberately failed to pay their tuition fees, despite being able to do so.
This resulted in the total unpaid tuition fees by the students who can afford their education building up every year.
The total debt in UM was recorded at RM51.2 million as of June this year, compared to RM47.33 million in 2022, RM37.34 million (2021) and RM28.62 million (2020). – October 11, 2023