Private vs Public Universities, The Case Of Malaysia

As a part time lecturer in one of the private universities in Malaysia, I get this question all the time. Generally students think that private universities are better than public universities. I disagree so here are my brief analysis on private and public universities in Malaysia.

In Malaysia, public university are non-profit organisation partially funded by central government and private university are profit based non-government coorperation. The followings are (for me) the advantages of public university:

(a) Academic stuff. Since 2010, public university have over 80% of their academic stuff are Phd or Phd candidate while less than 20% of private university academic stuff fall under that category. Phd graduates academic stuff may not be the best lecturer / tutor, but they are most likely to be better researcher.

(b) Research. Just look at the thesis done by private university student and public university student and you'll imediately know why public universities is better. I have the access for Master level thesis of some private universities in Malaysia and most of them are worse than undergraduate level thesis for public universities.

(c) Facilities. Since public universities are non-profit organisation and partially funded by government, their facilities are much better than private universities'. The library and database of public universities are incomparable.

(d) Students. In Malaysia, generally we have a tradition: The very best high school / secondary school graduates will study oversea in foreign universities. The next level of graduates will study in public universities and the rest will end up in private universities. This is happening as private universities tends to accept weaker students for higher profit. Because of that, public universities have much better competition among students and the environment of study is better too.

Private universities are catching up to public universities but they have a long way to go before they reach the level of public universities. As long as they can't improve on those areas, they will never surpass public universities.