China investors bet on Malaysia campus despite steep competition

In Malaysia’s Kuala Lumpur, universities are far from short in supply. Interspersed with the big public ones – Universiti Malaya and International Islamic University Malaysia among them – are a selection of the country’s international branch campuses – Monash and Nottingham, for example.

In the suburbs, private institutions proliferate with the universities of Sunway, Taylor’s and Cyberjaya having all made names for themselves in recent years.

But, in a city of over 9 million people and a country with a significant youth population, the competition hasn’t been enough to deter foreign investors keen to make their mark in South-east Asia.

On the outskirts of Kuala Lumpur, beyond the packed high-rises and close to the airport, comes a new entrant to the country’s private higher education race. Formerly a branch campus of India’s Manipal University, MILA University was bought out and renamed by Chinese investors in 2023. 

The company behind the venture already operates a private university in China’s Hainan, called Haikou University of Economics. But at a time when private universities are struggling to compete with government-funded ones in China, the business was looking for somewhere to invest elsewhere, said MILA vice-chancellor Graham Kendall.

Chinese investment in education in South-east Asia appears to be ramping up. In Thailand, for example, an influx of Chinese students has seen money follow from businesses based in their home nation. Unlike some of their compatriots across the border, the goal of MILA’s owners, however, is not to turn it into an outpost for Chinese students, according to Kendall. 

“If anything, we’re fighting not to be known as a Chinese institution,” he said. “We don’t want to be reliant on Chinese students.”

And, at a time when foreign-run campuses are increasingly taking the form of a rented floor in a tower block and a couple of hundred desks, MILA’s owners have something else in mind. 

The owner’s vision is for a campus within a city-type structure, said Kendall, who was formerly CEO and provost of the University of Nottingham Malaysia – which also has a sprawling campus on the outskirts of Kuala Lumpur and is generally regarded as one of the success stories of the 21st-century branch campus boom.

The plan mirrors the ecosystem in which the Hainan university already operates. “It’s got obviously lecture halls and labs and libraries…but it’s also got theatres, it’s got food and beverage, it’s got hostels,” said Kendall. “You can go on to that campus and you could not leave it for three years and you wouldn’t be disadvantaged. It’s got everything there.”

The model is not completely new to Kuala Lumpur. Across the capital is Sunway City, a suburb developed by entrepreneur and philanthropist Jeffry Cheah, complete with Sunway-branded hospitals, theme parks, malls and a flagship university – an institution that, thanks to heavy private investment, is rapidly climbing the international rankings. 

Alongside developing a surrounding city, complete with a 12,000-seater sports stadium, MILA’s strategy is also to diversify the university’s offering. The institution has recently been approved to offer 17 new programmes on top of the ones it was already running when it was still operated by Manipal. 

However, with steep competition within Malaysia’s well-developed private university sector, Kendall is conscious that standing out as a relatively new institution is likely to be tough. He said the question of MILA’s unique selling point is one that comes up “almost daily” among the leadership team. “What courses do we offer that other people don’t? What are we going to do when people graduate? 

“It’s really difficult to find something which another university is not doing.”

In two to three years, he continued, “once we’ve got all these new buildings, once we’ve got our new courses up and running [in subjects like computer science, AI and cybersecurity]...then I think we will have something to sell.”

He said he believes students’ expectations are increasing, especially international students who have “made a conscious decision to put their hand in their pocket”.

“They’re paying, maybe not for their degree, although some of them might think they are, but they’re paying for the experience, for the contact, the network, the global exposure that they can get.”

Despite the increasing saturation of the sector, Kendall said he believes the Malaysian government continues to be widely supportive of private higher education and foreign players. 

“I think generally they recognise that the private sector offers a good service,” he said, particularly as many of the foreign campuses in Malaysia are highly ranked internationally, including Nottingham, Southampton and Monash. 

The government “still want[s] to bring in international students, but they are coming under more competition now”, Kendall said, including from India which is in the midst of its own foreign campus boom. 

He added: “Actually it’s the private sector that doesn’t really want more private people to come in [to Malaysia] because it’s a tough gig.”

helen.packer@timeshighereducation.com