By R.Ravichandran
KUALA LUMPUR, May 7 (NNN-BERNAMA) — Several Polish universities have been actively exploring cooperation with Universiti Malaya (UM) and other Malaysian public universities in the field of higher education, said Poland Ambassador to Malaysia Professor Krzysztof Dębnicki.
He said the Embassy was currently working with the Malaysian Ministry of Education towards a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) but added that this could take some time.
Once the deal is done, everything will be easier in terms of exchanging of students, visiting professors and academic staff, he told Bernama International News Service in an interview here recently.
Dębnicki said that the collaboration with Malaysian universities was in line with Poland’s current focus on the internationalisation of higher education along with global trends and its successful links with numerous universities in Asia including in Singapore, China, India, Taiwan, Vietnam, and Australia.
He said most of Poland-Malaysia’s existing relations in the field of education were confined to Malaysian students pursuing higher education in Poland, and hoped that the recent meeting of Polish universities’ representatives with UM’s International Division would open the path for the broadening of mutual academic cooperation with the aim of exchanging students and academic staff.
He added that the recent participation of 14 universities and educational institutions from Poland at the Asia-Pacific Association for International Education (APAIE) Conference and Exhibition 2019 in Kuala Lumpur was a testimony to the growing ties between Poland and Malaysia in the field of education.
The 23-member delegation was led by the Director-General of Polish National Agency for Academic Exchange (NAWA), Dr Lukasz Wojdyga, and included the representatives of the Conference of Rectors of Academic Schools in Poland.
The Embassy of the Republic of Poland in Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia also recently organised the first Malaysian Alumni of Polish Universities Get-Together to foster and preserve ties between students and their former universities in Poland.
Addressing the alumni at the event, Dębnicki called on the “ambassadors of Poland in Malaysia” to continue to recall their good experiences in Poland to promote Polish education among Malaysians.
The largest group of the alumni by far were graduates of Polish medical universities (Warsaw Medical University, Collegium Medicum in Cracow, and Medical University of Lodz).
About 1,500 Malaysians have graduated from Polish universities in the last 10 years and the number is growing, according to the ambassador. At the moment, 168 Malaysian students are pursuing their studies in Poland.
Poland currently hosts 72,743 students from 166 countries, and the central European country of some 38 million people is ranked among the world’s top 25 most developed economies, with one of the lowest unemployment rates in Europe.
— NNN-BERNAMA