Summary

• Shamsul Saad, a Malaysian businessman, expressed that Malaysian universities shouldn’t be treated as a right to automatic admission, especially for Malays, in a podcast clip uploaded to TikTok on Sept 7.

• Malaysia’s public university admissions now use academic and co-curricular scores, while Bumiputera, a term referring mainly to Malays and the indigenous peoples of Sabah and Sarawak, preferences remain through several education pathways.

• Malaysia’s current affirmative-action policies in education grew out of policies introduced after 1969, rather than from the actions of any one prime minister.

MALAYSIA: Shamsul Saad, a Malaysian businessman and host of The Gutshot Podcast where he goes by the nickname Sam, has reignited a long-running Malaysian debate: should university admission be treated as a right, particularly for Malays, or determined primarily by academic merit?

Speaking with Professor Tajuddin Rasdi, Shamsul said: “That is one of the worst things that has happened in the Malaysian education system.” The podcast host then argued that Malaysia had made university admission a right “for everybody to be in, especially for Malays”.

Shamsul’s remarks appeared in a TikTok video by The Gutshot Podcast on Sept 7. His conclusion was that “University is not for everybody. In fact, university is not for most people.”