Star Education Fair returns with a series of talks by experienced speakers to help set course for your educational and professional future. With an array of topics available, make sure you don’t miss out on this rare opportunity.

The admission for this event is free amongst other things that you can explore in this event such as Hot Jobs : Trends in the next 5 years, Options after SPM, Funding Higher Education.

The details as follows :

• Date : 10 & 11 January 2009
• Time : 11.00 am to 7.00 pm
• Venue :   KL Convention Centre

For details, visit http://thestar.com.my/education/edufair08/

Popularity: 1% [?]

Are you still waiting for the admission to Polytechnic result ? MOHE has actually release the result through their website last week, unfortunately due to heavy traffic not many are able to check their status.

Anyway, if you are still not sure whatis the result, you can check it HERE.

Popularity: 5% [?]

If this news is real, of course all Malaysian will be benefited by having international qualification at a cheaper price. Newcastle University plans to open their medical campus in Johor by 2011. Eventhough its 3 years from now, but of course all necessary work should be done now.

Anyway, we just wait and see.

KUALA TERENGGANU: The prestigious Newcastle University in Britain plans to open a medical campus in Johor by 2011.

British High Commissioner Boyd McCleary said the campus would be the first international branch campus for Newcastle University while 18 other universities in Britain were interested to have links in Malaysia.

“The medical campus offers several medicine and bio-medical related courses,” he said after calling on Mentri Besar Datuk Ahmad Said at his office in Wisma Darul Iman during his two-day visit to the state.

The Newcastle University Medi-cine Malaysia campus would be located at the Iskandar Region.

On his meeting with Ahmad, Mccleary said it focussed on education and areas of enhancing English proficiency among the locals.

He said the British Council would continue to provide the expertise on the teaching of English in Terengganu schools.

McCleary will also visit the British Petroleum (BP) plant in Kemaman where the company was planning to expand its operation.

Popularity: 7% [?]

I don’t believe this ! Finally we have our own ranking system for our local universities called Rating System for Malaysian Higher Education Institutions 2007. But only 17 public universities were rated and placed in three categories – research, broad-based and specialised. What happen to the rest of institution, are they good enough to be rated ?

Anyway, read the press statement for details.

Press Statment

PUTRAJAYA: Universiti Malaya (UM) is the only public higher education institution to obtain a five-star rating in the Rating System for Malaysian Higher Education Institutions 2007 (Setara).

Higher Education Minister Datuk Seri Mohamed Khaled Nordin said UM came out tops in the research university category in the first-ever local rating system.

A total of 17 public universities were rated and placed in three categories – research, broad-based and specialised.

International Islamic University Malaysia and Universiti Teknologi Mara both scored four stars each in the broad-based category, while Universiti Teknologi Malaysia was the only one to receive a three-star rating for specialised universities. No university earned the highest rating – six stars.

“The purpose of Setara is to enable universities to measure their quality and see where they stand in relation to one another,” Mohamed Khaled told a press conference yesterday.

Commenting on the universities’ performance, Mohamed Khaled said there was still a lot of room for improvement. However, he added that by knowing their strengths and weaknesses, universities could strive to continuously improve in quality and ultimately, their position in the world rankings.

“We wanted to come up with our own system. Setara is more comprehensive compared to others, which are based more on perception and include things like peer review and employers’ perception,” said Mohamed Khaled referring to the <I>Times Higher Education Supplement</I> (THES) World University Rankings.

Setara involves a quantitative survey where data collected is analysed according to six domains – academic staff (25%), students’ selectivity (10%), research (15%), academic programmes (25%), resources (15%), and management (10%).

The survey will be carried out once every two years and private higher education institutions may also be included in future.

Last year, the ministry released the results of an academic reputation survey where Universiti Sains Malaysia was named the best overall university.

At the event, Mohamed Khaled also announced that five public and two private higher education institutions had submitted proposals under the accelerated programme for excellence or apex university.

Popularity: 8% [?]