Nik Ahmad Kamal Nik Mahmod

Assessing policies for attracting international students: case of Malaysia

While the world market for international students in higher education is dominated by traditional major players such as the US, UK and Australia, Malaysia has emerged as a recent contender with a market share of 2%. There is a gap in the literature in assessing the contributions of policy initiatives, including trade agreements, towards attracting inbound international students, especially from emerging contenders such as Malaysia. The objective of this paper is to compare and assess the policy initiatives at the unilateral, multilateral, regional and bilateral level and their impact on the host environment which is defined in terms of the key pull factors that have attracted international students to Malaysia. The main findings show that domestic policy initiatives have enhanced the host environment for attracting international students by providing a governance system that protects the interests of international students through its regulations. Efforts to improve quality assurance and accreditation also serve to attract international students. The regulation of fees contributed towards competitively priced programmes that are also pull factors. Multilateral, regional and bilateral commitments are relatively new, emerging only after 2006, and have less potential influence on inflows of international students as these commitments reflect, at best, existing practices in this sector.

Biosafety Protocol, SPS Agreement and export and import control of LMOs/GMOs

Purpose – When genetically modified organisms (GMOs) were put into the international trade, people in many countries, especially European countries, became skeptical of them. A perception developed that they are harmful to human, animal, plant life and health, and destructive to the environment. It is true that if there is no safe use of genetically modified living organisms (LMOs), other species might be affected causing loss to the environment. So as to ensure safe use of LMOs and GMOs, the Cartagena Protocol and the SPS Agreement were, respectively, made. The purpose of this paper is to critically examine both the legal instruments and to explore ways to make them co‐existent, so that human, animal, plant life and health, and the environment are protected without affecting the international trade in LMOs and GMOs.Design/methodology/approach – This paper undertakes a critical examination of the issues surrounding GMOs and LMOs.Findings – The Cartagena Protocol and the SPS Agreement serve two different p...

The impact of liberalization on higher education and domestic regulation

Tertiary education provided by private higher learning institutions (PHEIs) is one of the sectors that have been included in trade liberalization negotiations.