QUALITY MANAGEMENT IN MALAYSIAN HIGHER EDUCATION: CHALLENGES AND OPPORTUNITIES FOR UNIVERSITY MALAYSIA SABAH

Malaysian higher education has never experience more volatile changes as it has seen in the rise to the millennium. This is particularly true of the institute of higher learning that have mushroomed to 15 public universities and 15 private universities with another 600 private higher learning institution since the Private higher Educational Institutional Act (PHEIA) was enforced in 1996 (Malaysian Higher Education Country Report 2008) which allows the private sectors to be involved in the market for education. Having done that, the Malaysian government proceeded to address the eminent questions of the quality of the degrees produced and programs offered by these private and recently government institutions of higher learning in their bid to control the economic frenzy by certain quarters to tap the providential income from education. This paper provides a glimpse of the challenges and opportunities by University Malaysia Sabah, a government institution of higher learning to standardize, qualify, organize and maintain the quality of administration, teaching and learning through the implementation of a number of quality systems specifically ISO9000 and the Code of Practice for Programme Acreditation (COPPA) under the Malalysian Quality Assurance.