PUTRAJAYA: Education Minister Dr Maszlee Malik today claimed certain quarters are trying to sabotage the decision to merge Universiti Malaysia Terengganu (UMT) and Sultan Zainal Abidin University (UniSZA) by spreading "half-baked" information to confuse the public.
Describing them as "leftovers from the old regime" (previous government), he said these critics were using the issue to gain political leverage for the opposition.
"This is because Umno, previously had used public universities as their political centres. We need to change that.
"We want our universities to be global reference centres in their respective niche areas.
"We want the lecturers and professors to be internationally competitive and make sure that their students can also compete globally as well as have high employability," he told reporters after attending the launch of the National Reading Decade for civil servants, organised by the Prime Minister's Department.
On Wednesday, the Higher Education director-general’s office had in a statement said the government had agreed in principle with the proposed UMT-UniSZA merger following a Cabinet meeting on Sept 4.
The statement said the ministry was positive about the proposal and was preparing a framework for its implementation.
A special committee is being formed with administrators, lecturers, students and representatives from various agencies and ministries including stakeholders to facilitate the merger which is expected to take six months.
Maszlee explained one of the reasons for the merger was because UMT had not been performing compared to other local universities, securing the bottom two ranking.
In terms of employability, he said UMT has also showed poor figures in the past.
"This was one of the reasons which led to the decision to merge both varsities. If together, the two universities can be improved towards better performance.
"Apart from that, they are located in the same area, and shared many things in common, including student hostels, courses of as well as lecturers.
"When we brought this up to the Cabinet, it was suggested that the ministry should synergise these two higher learning institutions similar to what is being done in Norway, Finland, United Kingdom and America," he said.
The ministry has set up a committee on the matter which also found many positive outcome over the merger plan.
"It has been projected that in five years, both universities will be international reference centres in their own niche areas if merged." he added.
On allegations that corruption had led to UMT's merger talk, Maszlee said that was a different matter and still being investigated by the Malaysian Anti Corruption Commission (MACC).
When asked if there will be more university mergers, he replied: "No, not at the moment. Only UMT and UniSZA."