Thailand and Malaysia slash tuition

As the impact of the COVID pandemic lingers, perhaps becoming a permanent part of the way we live, students are stressed financially, psychologically, and in many other ways. This stress among students can be found around the world, with many campuses providing financial literacy and increased counseling services.

Thailand and Malaysia chose another path to relieve students' financial stress - slash the cost of tuition. Thailand's Prime Minister ordered a 50% reduction across all institutions while Malaysia's higher education sector reductions will vary from 10% to 35 %. A lecturer at Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia opined that the tuition reductions were "a drop in the ocean... My reading of both the Ministry of Higher Education and the Ministry of Education is that they have been too slow to react to pleas from civil society and the public for over a year now."