Tapping Malaysia’s Higher Education System

By Nurjehan Mohamed

SCIENCES Po, a leading social sciences institution in France, is seeking to create a presence in Malaysia, writes NURJEHAN MOHAMED.

What do Jacques Chirac (former French President and Prime Minister), Chandrika Kumaratunga (former president of Sri Lanka), Christian Dior (fashion designer), Marcel Proust (novelist) and Pierre Frdy, Baron de Coubertin (founder of the modern Olympic Games) have in common?

They are among the illustrious alumni of Institut d’Etudes Politiques de Paris (Paris Institute of Political Sciences), often referred to as Sciences Po, one of the few institutions in France that deal solely with social sciences.

Included in the list of its alumni or staff are chief executive officers of conglomerates; top officials of international bodies; award-winning authors; journalists; presidents of countries; and royalty, including the last surviving member of the defunct Ottoman empire.

Some names that may or may not be familiar to Malaysians are Louis Schweitzer, former CEO and current chairman of Renault; Pascal Lamy, director-general of World Trade Organisation; Stanley Karnow, Pulitzer Prize-winning author on Southeast Asia; Hala Basha Gorani, CNN anchor and correspondent; Paul Biya, president of Cameroon; Rainier III, Prince of Monaco; and Ertugrul Osman V, the 43rd head of the Imperial House of Osman.

The 136-year-old tertiary institution now boasts more than 6,500 current students at the undergraduate and postgraduate levels studying different disciplines of social sciences including history, economics, political science, journalism and the arts.

In a move to expand its links in Asia, Sciences Po is now looking at collaborating with Malaysia, which local social science practitioners say is a welcome development (see accompanying story).

Sciences Po vice-president and director of international affairs and exchanges Dr Francis Verillaud says the institution’s interest in Malaysia stems from a few factors.

“There is a strong public policy that is surging and being shaped in Malaysia towards building its higher education programmes and university system.

“I think the way the Malaysian government is tackling the issue of higher education is accurate and modern, which may not be obvious,” he says.

There are some countries in the region that are doing very well that outsiders may not notice as attention seems to be focused on China and India.

Verillaud cites Korea as an example of this and Malaysia as possibly another.

Sciences Po is considering working with Malaysia in one or more ways – encouraging its undergraduates to study in Malaysia in their final year, inviting more Malaysian students to study at Sciences Po and establishing a Malaysian chair at Sciences Po where a social sciences faculty from one of the universities in Malaysia could spend a year there.

“I think a good way of letting more French people know about Malaysia is having a Malaysian faculty there where he or she could teach about specific elements in his or her field of social sciences, meet social sciences colleagues at Sciences Po and perhaps do joint research.

“Additionally, should Malaysians want to pursue their doctoral degrees there, the presence of a Malaysian faculty there would make it easier,” says Verillaud.

If Sciences Po did not see a future in social sciences in Malaysia, it would not have considered any collaboration with the country.

The questions and issues that Malaysia is facing, as in any country in the world, have to do with the social sciences.

“There would be no grounding for public policy if there were no social sciences,” says Verillaud, adding that, in many ways, policy makers would normally associate the development of a country with sciences, not social sciences.

But, pursuing sciences for sciences does not mean anything – the articulation between society and the effects of sciences on society requires going back to social sciences.

“Today, much more than before, the social sciences are key to understanding the evolution of a country and its place in the globalisation process,” he says, adding it is with this in mind that Sciences Po has developed itself over the last decade.

Established in 1872, Sciences Po’s role was to address the lack of education and training of France’s decision-makers.

It has also trained private decision-makers, covering areas from history, economics, politics, journalism to the arts, across three levels – undergraduate, master’s and doctoral.

In the last decade, there has been a transformation in Sciences Po to enable it to compete with universities on a global stage and open up to students outside the traditional “elite” circles who had been disadvantaged when it came to its previous admissions examinations.

“The higher education system was not very open before. Today, tertiary institutions have to compete with not only those within the country but outside too,” says Verillaud.

Currently there are millions of students who would be studying outside of their own countries; there are more than 40,000 Malaysians studying abroad, mostly in other English-speaking countries such as the United States, United Kingdom, Australia or New Zealand.

In recent years, Sciences Po has made it compulsory for all its third-year undergraduates to spend a year abroad either in a partner institution or doing an internship, something Verillaud has not seen in other institutions.

To encourage students from around France to study there, the university has broadened its admission procedures, when before, had just been a demanding written process.

The French tertiary institution has agreements with 53 high schools in different suburbs in France where it organises selections via an interview rather than a written examination as there may be students who are good but whose written skills may not reflect their capabilities.

“For an institution of higher learning, it is important to have students from varied backgrounds – socially and culturally – to ensure different points of view, a diversity of exchanges, in the classroom,” says Verillaud.

Being a French institution makes it even more of a challenge to attract international students so now there are some courses which do not require students to have a high level of competency in the French language.

“We have created some programmes in English so students can do their degree fully in English, or the first part in English while they learn French, then the last part in French,” he says.

An example of a programme conducted fully in English is the Master in Public Affairs.

Today, one in three students in the institution is not French, and a variety of languages could be heard on its six campuses, including French, English, Spanish and German.

In its five satellite campuses undergraduates can specialise in a specific geographical area – Middle East and Mediterranean countries in Menton; Europe and Asia in Le Havre; Central and Eastern Europe in Dijon; German-speaking countries in Nancy; the Iberian Peninsula and Latin American in Poitiers.

“The idea behind these campuses is to bring, for instance in Menton, students from the Arab world and Europe to come together to study, live, work and share ideas together.

“You create something new where instead of being indifferent, at best, or confrontational, which is worse, people are put together and share their views and experiences with one another,” says Verillaud.

Students who do not speak Arabic would be able to learn it at the Menton campus; likewise at Le Havre, students would be taught an Asian language (Mandarin, Korean, Hindi or Japanese).

French is taught as a preparatory course in the first year.

This is so that students can be proficient in French, English and another language relevant in the economic field, linking the regions.

While the institution is not aiming for huge numbers, it makes it a point not to allow just one nationality to flood a campus.

“For instance, if there were 1,000 good applicants from China, we wouldn’t take all of them and put them in Le Havre, otherwise it would not be a Euro-Asia campus, it would become a Euro-China campus,” he says.

As Sciences Po is a non-profit public university, pursuing your studies there would also be less costly than going to a private institution in the UK or the US.

“The maximum tuition fees at Sciences Po is about 5,000 euros (approximately RM20,000) per year for the undergraduate programmes and for most of the master’s programmes,” Verillaud says, adding that the school also offers scholarships.

This is why, he adds, the institution is seeking ways to open the scope of possibilities for Malaysian students.

“Imagine today would be Sciences Po. Tomorrow, it could be another French institution and subsequently a German one – I think as we are in a diverse world, possibilities have to be more open than they are currently,” he says.

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