ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the issues of Higher Education (HE) access and equity in terms of the implementation impact of the Malaysian Government's affirmative action policy on the country's major ethnic groups, gender, geographical regions and the socioeconomically disadvantaged. At Higher Education (HE) level, the New Economic Policy (NEP) set quotas for students from the different ethnic groups to reflect their proportions in the population as a whole. The distribution of student enrolment in public HE institutions was to be fixed at 55 percent for Malays and 45 percent for the Chinese and Indian ethnic groups. The Ministry of Education (MOE) definition of HE covers certificate, diploma, undergraduate as well as postgraduate levels. The providers of HE in Malaysia are universities, university colleges, polytechnics and community colleges. The democratization and universalization of primary and secondary education since Independence in 1957 built up the social demand for tertiary education in Malaysia.
