Universities & University Colleges Act 1971

There has been some smoke being blown with regards to the Universities & University Colleges Act 1971 (UUCA). This act has generally been treated as an evil monstrosity by many political activists and civil rights people in Malaysia. Seeing that the government is planning to push through some ammendments to the Act, I decided to see what the big problem was.

Since I dread reading through legal documents, I googled around for some summary information and found that the various university websites only listed extracts of the Act. Unsatisfied, I decided to download a copy of the Act and skimmed through it.

It seems that most of the problems that people have with it are related to Section 15 of the Act, which has broad provisions that curtail the freedom of members of a university. In particular, the political parties are generally in disagreement with Section 15(3) of this section: (3) No person, while he is a student of the University, shall express or do anything which may be construed as expressing support, sympathy or opposition to any political party or trade union or as expressing support or sympathy with any unlawful organization, body or group of persons.

However, I am a little confused with what is stated in Section 5A(1) of the Act: 5A. (1) The provisions of this Act shall not apply to any higher educational institution with the status of a University which is authorized to be established by an order made by the Yang di-Pertuan Agong under subsection (2) and any private higher educational institution conferred with the status of a University or University College under any written law.

If this paragraph means what I think it means, the UUCA isn’t a very big problem. It does not apply to any of the private institutions, which is about 50% of the national student body. As for public institutions, the UUCA may not apply to all of them either. According to wikipedia, UPM was established with the Incorporation Order signed by His Majesty The Yang Di-Pertuan Agong as provided for under the Universities and University Colleges Act, 1971, and published in the Government Gazette as P.U.(A) 387 dated 29 October, 1971.

If the paragraph means what I think it means, it means that our government has been using the UUCA as a FUD weapon. While this is not right, it is the standard procedure used by all governments to keep people in line. So, I don’t blame them for using if it was there. I just think that the big amount of smoke being blown about by all parties is a bit too much.

If the paragraph means what I think it means, changing the Act would only benefit a small fraction of the student population. It would be better for us to focus our attention on fixing the deep problems at our universities, many which are not directly tied to the UUCA.