UITM

Thursday July 14, 2011

UiTM goes from gold to platinum

By RICHARD LIM
educate@thestar.com.my

 

 

SHAH ALAM: Universiti Teknologi Mara (UiTM) has become the first public university to receive the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (ACCA) Platinum Award for its professional accountancy tuition programmes.

The award comes a year after the varsity bagged the Gold Award.

“The short duration that took us to move to Platinum from Gold proves that public universities have what it takes to put themselves on the world map,” UiTM vice-chancellor Prof Datuk Dr Sahol Hamid Abu Bakar said.

He received the award from ACCA brand executive director Neil Stevenson at a ceremony witnessed by Deputy Higher Education Minister Saifuddin Abdullah here yesterday.

Dr Sahol Hamid said the marked improvement stemmed from the efforts of the varsity’s Department of Professional Accounting Studies.

“Unlike students at private institutions, accounting students at public universities take up other subjects which may not be entirely related to the ACCA course.

“The university activities differ as well,” he told The Star after the opening of the National Conference on Student Development and Services at UiTM here yesterday.

Dr Sahol Hamid said UiTM’s decision to bring in lecturers from the industry contributed to the award as students were well exposed to the challenges of the working world.

With the award, UiTM is now officially recognised by ACCA as an Approved Learning Partner.

Saifuddin said the ACCA recognition of UiTM was an achievement at the global level and proved that Malaysia’s manpower, especially that in accounting, was of international standard