University's founder 'in a hurry' to make brainchild a global institution
When Limkokwing University of Creative Technology launched its Piccadilly campus in London last year, Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah Badawi was on hand to celebrate the opening of the country's first university in Britain.
In his speech, Mr Abdullah said to the university's founder and president, Lim Kok Wing: 'You seem to be in a hurry.' The prime minister was not joking. In the five years since it was awarded university status, Professor Emeritus Lim's brainchild has rapidly spread across the globe.
It now spans three continents and has 25,000 students from more than 140 countries on its global roll call, with numbers having increased four-fold in the past two years alone. With campuses in Jakarta, Beijing, Phnom Penh, Botswana, Lesotho and London, and more due to open in Bali, New York and Swaziland next year, Professor Lim has added new meaning to the phrase 'globalising higher education'.
The university's main campus in Cyberjaya, a technology park on the outskirts of Kuala Lumpur, is also a mini United Nations, with foreigners from 133 countries representing 60 per cent of the 9,000 students.
The university, which offers degrees and diplomas in disciplines such as design, multimedia, communications, business and IT, has about 500 Chinese students, the second-largest market behind Indonesia.
Professor Lim, an entrepreneur who established the college initially to train young Malaysians for the advertising industry, said he wanted to reverse the flow of students from east to west. Students can spend a semester studying at one of the university's overseas campuses.
'If you are only in the west and looking at the western side you only know half the world. Your coin should have two sides,' he said. 'The people from the western world must come to Asia.'
Professor Lim sees great value in bringing together students from a diverse range of backgrounds. Both local and international students must live on campus for their first semester.
'The kids who come here, I say to them: 'Don't go home before you meet friends from 60 countries.' They go home with friends from everywhere. In today's world, nothing can be more important than that,' he said.
His other priority is providing students with strong links to industry. Marketing students have designed materials for the government's quit smoking campaign, while the university's branding and packaging design centre produced the signs for Kuala Lumpur's international airport.
The film and television academy, which boasts Hollywood star Mel Gibson as an adviser, gives students the chance to produce their assignments in state-of-the-art editing suites.
Professor Lim said the university was particularly aware of the need to transform economies from a manufacturing base to a knowledge economy. 'I wanted to start a university that was industry-driven,' he said.
Professor Lim's plans for the university show no signs of slowing down. His goal is to reach a million students in Africa within the next five years and to have a presence in 10 countries on the continent next year, either by establishing campuses or offering collaborative programmes through local institutions.
'That will be the challenge. I've got a sense we will succeed,' said Professor Lim, who was exposed to the suffering in Africa when he worked on Nelson Mandela's first election campaign.
Professor Lim said setting up campuses on the continent was 'something I felt we could do for African countries'.
He hopes the university will become a major provider of education in Africa and closer to home in Indochina, in countries such as Cambodia and Laos.
'I think I've started the journey. Hopefully the journey will go on for the next 50 years and keep growing and growing.'
