Internationalisation of Higher Education Policy: Implications on international student withdrawals from Malaysia

Abstract

This paper aims to present and briefly discuss policy documents focusing on the internationalisation of higher education in Malaysia and their implication on international student withdrawals. Numerous policies and guidelines have been developed by the Ministry of Higher Education in Malaysia to propel Malaysia as education hub in this region. However, the current statistic does not seem to support national goal to increase international student enrolment to 200,000 by 2020 or be an education hub of excellence. Existing literature indicates that there has never been any research that studies in detail on the issue of international student withdrawals from pursuing higher education in Malaysian education institutions. Therefore, an in-depth study is needed to investigate the current policy development process and their implication on the phenomenon of international student withdrawals from Malaysian higher institutions.