Penang’s Latest Draw – Edu-Tourism

PENANG is now looking into promoting edu-tourism in its bid to tap the state’s education potentials.

State Economic Planning, Education and Human Resource, Science, Technology and Innova-tion Committee chairman Datuk Dr Toh Kin Woon said it had set up a special committee, Educa-tion@Penang, early this year for the purpose.

He said the committee would work with Penang Tourism Ac-tion Council (PTAC) to promote education as the state’s latest tourism product.

The Education@Penang was set up to get about 40 private higher learning institutions in the state to promote Penang as an education hub, he said.

He said people outside Penang were still not aware of the spe- cial committee and the state needed to publicise the education facilities promoted by the committee.

He said that this year, the state had set aside RM30,000 to sponsor booth rentals for local and worldwide education roadshows.

“We are also hoping to get some allocations from the PTAC to promote the state’s education facilities,” he said .

He said that instead of promoting their individual colleges, the private colleges should work towards selling Penang as a destination for tertiary education.

“It’s an encouraging to note that most colleges had already accepted our basic concept of collectively selling Penang’s education facilities,” he said yesterday after chairing a follow-up meeting of the recent ‘Meeting of Round Table on Making Penang a Private Education Centre’.

Dr Toh said the special committee had proposed that a sub-committee be set up by next month to help the committee to sort out activities to promote the state’s education facilities.
He said Penang had about 15,000 students enrolled in private institutions now, which was about 6% of the nationwide figure.

“We have to raise the number to at least 28,000 by 2010, which is almost double what we currently have, if we want to stay competitive,” he said.

He said the special committee would also create a common portal to link up websites of all private colleges in the state.

Source : STAR
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