Indian Varsities in Malaysia

There have been 2 announcements this week on Indian varsities opening in Malaysia!

The latest one is the opening of a Dental School called Penang International Dental College (PIDC). This would be opened by Vinayaka Mission's University from India, with an initial investment of RM55 Million.

The campus would be built on a 10-acre land in Kepala Batas with a built-up space of 150,000 square feet and expected to be ready by September 2010.

This would have 250 dental chairs and is going to be one of the largest dental center in South East Asia.

Tuition fee is expected to be in the range of RM175,000, which would be a fraction of the cost of dental elsewhere.

The other announcement on education is for a campus named Premier International University to be built in Gua Tempurung, Perak.

The consortium comprises the Anna University in Chennai, the Tamil Nadu Dr M.G.R. Medical University, KLE University in Belgaum, Karnataka, the International Institute of Information Technology Hyderabad and the University of Hyderabad would be operating a university with courses in Medical, Applied Science, Management, Accounting and Information Technology.

Perak State Government (perhaps with other local partners) would own 51% stake of this university, and the university would be built at a cost of RM450 Million.

The 2 campuses would definitely further liberalize our education section and provide the needy manpowers/talents for our students. However, there is a need to ensure that the quality produced is at a certain high level.

On the name of "Premier International University", I would say that it is a very bad name. Although it is tentatively named so, I don't think that name would be able to really reflect such a campus. I would rather that it creates a branding from its source. A good local name could be what it needs and not those hype words like Premier and International, which brings zero added value to the university. It would just create misperception among the public.

Lets hope that these 2 universities would be successful to help develop our human capital for Malaysia, especially for medical and dentistry field.