KUALA LUMPUR, Nov 14 — The National Higher Education Fund Corporation (PTPTN) is considering suspending funding for university courses with student repayment rates below 50 per cent, as part of efforts to foster a culture of loan repayment among borrowers.
According to New Straits Times, PTPTN CEO Ahmad Dasuki Abdul Majid said that the corporation is exploring mechanisms to collaborate with universities to encourage repayment, particularly for courses with high repayment rates.
“We may consider holding funding for courses with lower than 50 per cent of loan repayment in certain universities.
We are trying to get the universities to help us with this,” he was quoted as saying during a webinar hosted by the Khazanah Research Institute, titled “Individual vs. Collective Interests: The Student Loan Conundrum” today.
Ahmad Dasuki emphasised that PTPTN was founded to ensure that students with strong SPM results could pursue higher education at both public and private institutions.
“Our concept is based on a repayment model.
“We encourage those who have been employed to repay their loans so we can give back to the society who needs the loans,” he added.
As of September, PTPTN had disbursed a total of RM74 billion in loans.
A parliamentary reply from Higher Education Minister Datuk Seri Zambry Abdul Kadir revealed that PTPTN had approved 3,951,404 loans totalling RM71 billion up to the end of last year.
However, over 2.7 million loans, amounting to RM32 billion, remain unpaid.
Zambry also noted that 72 per cent of the loans were granted to Bumiputera students, while 28 per cent were allocated to non-Bumiputera students.
