Affirmative Action in Malaysia: Education and Employment Outcomes since the 1990s

Abstract

An important element of Malaysia's affirmative action regime has been to expand tertiary education access and upper-level occupational opportunities for the Bumiputera beneficiary group. However, the momentum of change has dwindled in recent years; Bumiputera representation in managerial and professional positions remained fairly static across 1995-2005. This paper provides a framework for conceptualising affirmative action and outlines Malaysia's affirmative action programmes in education and employment. It compiles evidence of affirmative action outcomes from official publications and various surveys, and derives new information from census data. Tertiary education quantitatively burgeoned from the 1990s, but the growing importance of educational quality adversely affects Bumiputera graduates, who predominantly enrol in less regarded domestic public institutes. In addition, Bumiputera continue to rely heavily on the public sector for employment in managerial and professional positions. The findings demonstrate a critical need to arrest the quality decline in public education and to judiciously modify affirmative action programmes.