MANJUNG, 27 April- All universities in the country have been granted autonomy to determine their respective courses or fields of study, said Higher Education Minister Datuk Seri Dr Zambry Abd Kadir.

According to him, the issue claiming that the Malaysian Qualifications Agency (MQA) interfered in determining the courses that should be offered simply did not arise at all.

He explained that MQA's role is to ensure that the academic quality offered by universities meets the appropriate standards.

"What determines the courses that will be introduced comes from the universities themselves, and then the universities will discuss with the MQA," he said.

"The MQA's role is to provide guidance to the universities in question regarding the quality of education itself, the curriculum being introduced, so that the curriculum is not substandard, meaning it doesn't have low value," he added.

He said this after officiating the closing ceremony of Universiti Teknologi Malaysia’s (UTM) TechnoXplorer 2025 programme at Sekolah Menengah Kebangsaan (SMK) Ahmad Boestamam, here, today.

Earlier, former higher education deputy minister, Datuk Seri Saifuddin Abdullah had called for universities to be given greater autonomy and for bureaucratic barriers to be reduced to enable Malaysia’s higher education institutions to thrive.