Malaysia's Education Import from Australia

Malaysia's education import from Australia apparently is worth around RM3.7billion. There are roughly 19k Malaysian students studying in Australia.

Source : Financial Times

This shows tremendous potential in government attracting our own students to study in Malaysia. 

FYI, operating budget for all our public universities is just RM6.7billion(2018) and they host around   532,000 students. (this excludes the extra RM1bil MoHE as a whole spends on emoluments & 600k on Supplies). 

Best way is for govt to flex its ability to borrow at the cheapest rate, access to free land to expand our IPTA capacity to lure our own students to study locally. Hire the best academics from around the globe if we must. 

This is just Australia btw. Excluding UK, New Zealand , United states and 3rd world countries like India, Egypt & Indonesia etc.

On a smaller note , I still don't understand why likes of MARA send students to 3rd world countries for medicine when there is ample of free capacity within our own IPTAs.

Anyway, best way to incentivize parents to send their students to local university is through higher education financing reform. Free higher education increases opportunity cost of sending your own kid abroad. When both rich & poor send their kids to the same public universities, then only we can hope to rival NUS, NTU down south.

If Malaysia can spend RM3.7billion educating just 19k students in Australia. That means we surely can spend same amount expanding & providing good quality tertiary education via general taxation for all.