KUALA LUMPUR: The National Higher Education Fund Corporation (PTPTN) is considering holding funding for university courses with student repayment rates below 30 per cent.
"We are looking at ways to work with universities to encourage a loan repayment culture among borrowers. Among the mechanisms we are looking at is to continue funding for courses with high rate of loan repayment."
"However, we may consider holding funding for courses with lower than 30 per cent of loan repayment in certain universities. We are trying to get the universities to help us with this," PTPTN chief executive officer Ahmad Dasuki Abdul Majid said during a webinar by Khazanah Research Institute entitled "Individual vs. Collective Interests: The Student Loan Conundrum".
He said PTPTN was established to ensure that students with commendable results in SPM were able to continue their higher education either in public or 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 said.
As at September, Ahmad Dasuki said the fund has so far disbursed loans totalling RM74 billion.
In a parliamentary written reply on Monday, Higher Education Minister Datuk Seri Dr Zambry Abdul Kadir said the PTPTN has approved 3,951,404 loans with a total of RM71 billion disbursed up to the end of last year.
More than 2.7 million loans had not been repaid which amounted to a total of RM32 billion outstanding.
Zambry added that 2.8 million loans (72 per cent) went to Bumiputera students while 1.1 million loans (28 per cent) were made to non-Bumiputera students.