Education

As of 2015, the most popular course for both private and public universities are engineering field, with up to 38,876 and 84,276 students respectively. The second course with highest enrolment is health and welfare field for private universities with 30,955 students and science field for public universities with 58,100 students. The rest of the field are rank as follow for private universities 3) computing (16,769), 4) science (7,914), 5) construction (6,394), and 6) mathematics (241). For public universities, the rest of the courses are rank as follow 3) health and welfare (37,175), 4) computing (34,616), 5) construction (19,443), and 6) mathematics (12,788).

Since the Sixth Malaysia Plan (1991-1995), education as a whole has been accorded as highest priority. A lot of private HEI begins to established since 1996. From less than 10 private HEI establishments since 1996, Malaysia has now 490 private HEI in 2016. Universities students enrolment has grown from 597,379 to 808,816 students from 2008 to 2013. As of every year, one fifth of the total budget will be allocated for education purposes. In 2016, RM 52.4 billion out of RM 260.8 billion is allocated unto Ministry of Education and Ministry of Higher Education . Hence, higher education industry continues to be indicated as a key economic driver in Malaysia.

International schools have increase from 79 to 116 schools, a total of 46.8% since 2012 to 2016, growing at a CAGR of 10.1%. Compare to other private education institution for primary and secondary, international schools are the largest in number and growth rate.

Among all these international schools, 67% of them are independent, 22% are globally established, and 11% are local chain schools. 96% of them provides both primary and secondary level of curriculums. British curriculum is the most popular curriculum which occupies 63% of all the types of curriculums.

Education has contributed 39% gross output under the services sector. Ever since 2010, the commence of Economic Transformation Programme (ETP), early childhood education specifically, had been identified as one of the contributors to Malaysia’s Gross National Income (GNI). It aims to raise Malaysia’s GNI from 2010 to 2020 by RM34 billion.