JOHOR BARU, Nov 21 - A British university and a private Malaysian school have signed up with Iskandar Malaysia, kick-starting an ambitious move by the Johor development region to attract Singaporeans and other foreign students.
Newcastle University will open a medical faculty in Iskandar by 2011, while Malaysian education group Cempaka Schools is to open an international boarding school for boys in the next few years, it was announced yesterday.
Both institutions will be located in Iskandar's education hub, Educity, which is near the Second Link at Tuas.
The British faculty will be called Newcastle University Medicine Malaysia, or NUMed, while the Malaysian group will open the Cempaka International School.
Cempaka Schools is well-known in Malaysia for its private and international schools.
"The proposed institutions, strategically located within the growth triangles of Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia, will expand Iskandar Malaysia's infrastructure offerings," said a statement by Iskandar Investment, which coordinates projects in the Johor development corridor.
"Universities like Newscastle...see the opportunity of attracting students, not just from Malaysia, but also from the region," said British High Commissioner Boyd McCleary, who was present at the signing ceremony in Johor yesterday.
The development corridor is about three times the size of Singapore and is expected to be completed in 20 years.
Johor chief minister Datuk Abdul Ghani Othman said yesterday that the region has attracted total investments of RM40.25 billion since its inception in 2006.
These have included foreign property investors from the Middle East and manufacturing companies from Japan, Spain and Singapore.
Despite the global economic slowdown, Abdul Ghani expects growth to remain on an even keel.
The involvement of Newcastle University and Cempaka Schools is just the start of Iskandar's education-hub ambitions.
It is also wooing other institutions. They include a British boarding school, a Swiss hospitality college, the applied science faculty of a UK university and a Malaysian multimedia university, sources said.
A major advantage for international students, officials say, is the lower cost of getting an education in Malaysia.
"We estimate that it will approximately cost only half of getting our degree here, than in the UK," said the incoming chief executive of NUMed, Professor Reginald Jordan.
NUMed aims to eventually have 900 medical students and plans to invest RM400million over 30 years.
Frieda Mohd Pilus, chairman of Cempaka Schools, said her Iskandar campus was expected to take in secondary school students who could expect lower fees than in Singapore-based international schools.
Educity plans to eventually house eight tertiary faculties on one campus. They will share facilities like a library, hostels and a sports complex.
Said Abdul Ghani: "There is one campus occupied by eight different faculties. Each may come from different universities. It is called an education city with multiple faculties."
The boarding schools, on the other hand, will have their own facilities.
A major core of the Iskandar region is located near the Second Link, which aims to become an international metropolis, officials say.
Apart from Educity, a marina for yachts, a theme park, hotels and residential villas are part of the blueprint. - The Straits Times
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