How Asia’s corporate-owned universities made their mark

The route to Sunway University is far from your typical campus approach. To reach the Malaysian institution, you must first navigate to Sunway City on the outskirts of Kuala Lumpur, past the various Sunway hotels and Sunway shopping malls, away from the Sunway medical centre, until you reach the entrance to a canopied walk.

Continue through this, which stands above the tiger enclosures and banana boats that make up the Sunway Lagoon theme park, and eventually will you arrive on campus. While the Sunway Group’s university is one of Malaysia’s leading private institutions, it is also a prized feather in the cap of the south-east Asian conglomerate that established it in 2004.

Universities such as Sunway have been popping up across Asia for decades. South Korea’s Pohang University of Science and Technology (POSTECH) was established in the 1980s by a steel company, while Malaysia is also home to Universiti Teknologi Petronas, set up in the late 1990s by the Petronas oil and gas corporation. And newer ones are emerging – Vietnamese conglomerate Vingroup broke ground on VinUni in 2018, the same year that India’s Jio University was established by the parent company of the country’s most popular telecoms company.

For big businesses, setting up a university seems an unusual move as it is unlikely to generate anything like the profits they are used to. But there are other driving factors. In some cases, company leaders feel they need to step in if they are going to secure the graduates they need for their expanding workforce, while others are leaned on by governments or are simply philanthropically minded and keen to support the development of their nation. Often, it is a mix of all these reasons.

Whatever the motivation, many of the institutions are having an impact. “The famous ones…are really among the best universities,” said Philip Altbach, professor emeritus at Boston College’s Center for International Higher Education. “These are some of the most innovative institutions in their respective countries.”

Academics leading these universities rave about the benefits of having a non-traditional patron – in particular, being free of the bureaucracy that impedes so many public universities.

“The culture here is very action oriented, and I’ve seen the group at VinUni get stuff done in ways I’ve never seen before,” said David Bangsberg, the university’s provost. “The whole campus, which is a beautiful campus, was built in 14 months. When I launched a new school of public health [in the US], it took me five years to build one building.”

And, he added, “the management practices, the financial accounting practices, are top notch, because we’re partnered with a very sophisticated multinational corporation”.

Some scholars also believe that universities with their roots in industry are well placed to develop employable students – some of whom go on to work for their alma mater’s parent company.

At Sunway University, for example, students have opportunities to intern with the conglomerate, as well as with other organisations. “There’s no preferred pathway for our students to go and work for Sunway [once they graduate], but it’s a great opportunity for them to work in Sunway,” said Sibrandes Poppema, the university’s president.

“But I would not be very happy if all of them would start working for Sunway because then I would know that we probably would not be as competitive as we are now. So it’s really important that they go to all sorts of different companies.”

In general, Professor Altbach explained, these universities are viewed positively in middle-income countries, where stifled public institutions may struggle to meet demand.

“They can do all these things which the public sector cannot do now. Partly it’s money…but partly it’s bureaucracy and new ways of thinking,” he said.

However, while the best ones may be driving innovation in higher education, there is also a “sleazy” underworld of companies setting up low-quality institutions for non-altruistic purposes, according to Professor Altbach. For example, there are cases of property developers in Indonesia and the Philippines attempting to attract homebuyers with the promise of new universities that, in reality, are unlikely to offer much in the way of quality education.

And even among the best of these universities, their demographic reach can be limited. “Despite the deep pockets, they’re, generally speaking, tuition dependent,” said Professor Altbach. This means that they tend to attract those who can afford to pay higher fees – middle- and upper-class students – which does little for improving access to higher education.

Depending on how they are set up, corporate-owned universities also risk falling prey to market fluctuations and shareholder whims. Sunway University, for example, only narrowly avoided being caught up in the 2007 financial crisis because the group’s founder, fearing bankruptcy, had moved the institution to the control of a non-profit foundation.

VinUni’s Professor Bangsberg said the institution was “working hard” to ensure sustainability by developing new revenue streams, including through tuition fees and research grants. “The spirit of being entrepreneurial extends to the university,” he said. “The biggest challenge is we’re building a plane as we fly it.”

helen.packer@timeshighereducation.com