KUALA LUMPUR – Universiti Teknologi Mara’s (UiTM) intake of foreign students is not for undergraduate programmes meant to cater to Malaysian Bumiputera, but to the university’s Institute of Continuing Education and Professional Studies (iCeps) for post-graduate studies, a former vice-chancellor has explained.
Tan Sri Ibrahim Abu Shah said, who was also a former chairman of UiTM’s board of directors, described iCeps as a “private wing” that did not touch existing flagship programmes so as to maintain the institution’s mandate to assist the Bumiputera.
Ibrahim was UiTM vice-chancellor from 2001 to 2010, and chairman of its board of directors from 2021 to 2023.
As such, he told Scoop that non-Bumiputera students training in cardiothoracic surgery can be placed under iCeps as one solution to addressing the nationwide shortage of cardiothoracic surgeons.
“It is appropriate to put the cardiothoracic field under iCeps because it is a professional course, not a flagship programme, it will be just like we place international students under this private wing,” he said.
iCeps is described as a strategic business unit of UiTM with a role in generating income for the university while fostering global partnerships through education, according to its website.
Ibrahim, who previously expressed support for allowing non-Bumiputera doctors into UiTM on a temporary basis, said placing trainee cardiothoracic surgeons under iCeps is a solution that will not “anger” people.
He was referring to the outcry after the Malaysian Medical Association (MMA) suggested UiTM consider wider public interest by allowing non-Bumiputera doctors into its Parallel Pathway programme in cardiothoracic surgery so as to overcome the shortage of experts in the field.
Questions over alleged double-standards in UiTM’s admissions of international students while being off-limits to Malaysian non-Bumiputera arose on social media after the university and other quarters rejected MMAs proposal.
MMA in its appeal to UiTM had also said it should open its doors to fellow Malaysians on a needs basis to resolve the shortage of cardiothoracic surgeons, since it admitted international students.
Ibrahim, meanwhile, said if UiTM did not want to allow non-Bumiputera trainee cardiothoracic surgeons into iCeps, it could conduct training for them outside UiTM through collaborations with Universiti Malaya and the National Heart Institute (IJN) to create another Parallel Pathway programme in the field.
UiTM is currently the only public university in the country that has an established Master’s cardiothoracic surgery training programme in collaboration with IJN.
The rationale for preserving UiTM as a Bumiputera-only university stems from its founding mandate in the UiTM Act 1976, based on Article 153 of the Federal Constitution, which protects the special position of Malays and the natives of Sabah and Sarawak.
After MMA’s appeal, UiTM’s student council launched a black-shirt campaign and a social media drive among students to protest plans to open the university to non-Bumiputera, without specific mention of the current context on the shortage of cardiothoracic surgeons.
Following criticism, the student council later apologised for being “unclear” and for causing misunderstanding among the public about the campaign. – May 30, 2024