We provide drafting services to create constituent documents for the establishment of institutions as well as institutional regulations for the daily operations of the institution. Private institutions, whose transactions with students and staff are contractual, would need clear and unambiguous internal regulations to avoid costly litigation and student disquiet.
Our services in drafting regulations for student organisations take into account statutory obligations as well as the institutions duties to students , their parents and the general public.
Private Higher Educational Institutions advertising their programmes are bound by statutory provisions and regulations on advertising, the advertising code created by the Ministry of Education and the general law on advertising. We assist institutions in developing SOPs that will ensure compliance of all regulations.
Our standard operational procedures for programme revue, assessment and examinations conform to Ministry of Education and Malaysian Qualifications Agency regulations and are designed to expedite programme and institutional audits.
We draft standard operational procedures for PHEIs that ensure compliance of laws and generate development and improvement of processes.
Student discipline and disciplinary procedures are the subjects of binding statutory provisions. These provisions encroach on the internal management of student discipline in that the student has a final right to appeal to the Minister of Education. It is therefore important for Private Higher Educational Institutions to develop internal disciplinary regulations and procedures that conform to the provisions in the Act.
Important changes were made to the provisions concerning the management of students in private universities and colleges by the Private Higher Educational Institutions (Amendment) Act 2017.
Section 20 of the Amendment Act introduces much-needed clarity to the provisions in the Act dealing with the discipline and conduct of students in a PHEI. Under the previous provisions, the Chief Executive was the sole officer responsible for the discipline and conduct of students and all procedures associated with the management of discipline. These provisions raised questions about the validity of internal institutional procedures of PHEIs which may involve several persons and several levels of inquiry and decision-making, depending on the size and organizational structure of the institution concerned. It was not clear under those provisions if the chief executive could delegate his powers to other officials of the PHEI. The Act was silent on the question. It was also not clear if the PHEI had the right to make its own disciplinary rules because s 46(2) stipulated that the chief executive ‘shall comply with and give effect to directions issued by the Registrar General from time to time in respect of the discipline and conduct of the students’. The absence of any directions issued by the Registrar General on student discipline was a special concern because it raised the validity of disciplinary rules that were issued by the institutions.
The Amendment Act makes substantial changes to these provisions to overcome the uncertainties of the current position. First, although the chief executive is still the disciplinary authority for student discipline and conduct, the amendment allows that authority to be delegated to any ‘employee of the private higher educational institution who is in charge of student affairs, in respect of any particular student or any class or category of students of the private higher educational institution’. Secondly, implicit in the amendment is the recognition that PHEIs may make their own disciplinary rules. The amendments vest on the disciplinary authority the power to take such disciplinary action and ‘impose such disciplinary punishment as may be provided for under any disciplinary rules that may be made by the private higher educational institution’.
Private Higher Educational Institutions may have to amend their existing student disciplinary rules to bring them in line with the changes made by the Amendment Act, but this is a small price to pay for the certainty the amendments bring to the disciplinary powers of the PHEI.
