Approaches of Malaysian General Education at Tertiary Level: A Plural Outlook

Abstract

All education systems in the world are designed to guide people in learning a culture, moulding their behaviour in the ways of adulthood, and guiding them towards eventual role in the society. It is the platform that provides and facilitates knowledge creation and transfer. The purpose of this paper is to examine the general education programme currently being implemented by three universities in Malaysia. They are Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM), University of Malaya (UM) and Universiti Putra Malaysia (UPM). It discusses the purpose, the structure and the content of general education. It also tries to answer questions such as how much time is allocated to general education subjects; when do the students take these subjects; concentrated or spread; are the subjects freely elected or offered as a compulsory programme or loose series of elective courses, and what are the courses that are considered to be under general education. Finally, the paper concludes with some suggestions for improving general education programme.