A Study On The Development Motivations And Implementation Approaches Of Malaysia Transnational Higher Education

Malaysia transnational higher education has done well in the Asia-pacific region, because Malaysia begins early among the Asia-pacific countries, then it develops rapidly in large scale. The development of transnational higher education in Malaysia, there are two main implementation approaches, cooperating international programmers with foreign universities and building branch campus in Malaysia. Beginning with the twinning program of Malaysian private colleges and foreign universities in 80's, now there are 7 course types, namely twinning programmer, credit transfer programmer, advanced standing programmer, external degree programmer, external professional examinations programmer, distance learning programmer and joint programmer. In just 30 years, Malaysia transnational higher education has undergone a process from introduction to go out. Firstly, Malaysia introduces student from other countries and now Malaysia begins to building campus in other countries.The motivations of the development of transnational higher education in Malaysia are including of international impact and the need of Malaysia economic, political and cultural development. The international reasons are the demand of international economic globalization and internationalization of higher education; the rise of trade in education services, the challenge of information technology developing quickly and the needs of provider and receiver of transnational higher education.Domestic motivations include three terms:the nation, university and student. On national level, the motivations of developing transnational higher education are mainly to meet the need of national socio-political, economic and cultural development; to improve national competitiveness. On university level, the motivations are mainly to meet the need for self-development of higher education in Malaysia; to improve the competitiveness of Malaysian universities and international reputation and to provide international latitude for the university's teaching; on student level, students have more study opportunities; at the same time students can get higher graduate diploma with lower cost.This paper firstly reviews the development process of transnational higher education in Malaysia, and then analysis the motivation for the development of Malaysia transnational higher education. This paper describes the 7 types of programmer in detail; Secondly, this paper analysis the problems in the development and characteristics; Finally, This paper holds that in the process of setting up transnational higher education, our universities are able to benefits from Malaysia transnational higher education and simultaneously should think highly of questions that exist in the implementation.