Vin Group’s VinUni, Hanoi campus

The route to Sunway University is far from your typical campus approach. To reach this Malaysian institution, you must first navigate to Sunway City on the outskirts of Kuala Lumpur, past various Sunway hotels and Sunway shopping malls, away from the Sunway medical centre, until you reach the entrance to a canopied walk. Sunway U is a prized feather in the cap of the south-east Asian conglomerate that established it in 2004.

Universities such as Sunway have been popping up across Asia for decades. South Korea’s Pohang University of Science and Technology (POSTECH) was established in the 1980s by a steel company, while Malaysia is also home to Universiti Teknologi Petronas, set up in the late 1990s by the Petronas oil and gas corporation. And newer ones are emerging — Vietnamese conglomerate Vingroup broke ground on VinUni in 2018, the same year that India’s Jio University was established by the parent company of the country’s most popular telecom company.

For big businesses, setting up a university seems an unusual move as it is unlikely to generate the profits they are used to. But there are other driving factors. In some cases, company leaders feel they need to step in if they want to secure the graduates they need for their expanding workforces, while others are prodded by governments or are simply philanthropically minded and keen to support the development of their nation. Often, it is a mix of all these reasons.

Whatever the motivation, many of the institutions are having an impact. “The famous ones… are really among the best universities,” says Philip Altbach, professor emeritus at Boston College’s Center for International Higher Education. “These are some of the most innovative institutions in their respective countries.”

Not a few scholars also believe that universities with their roots in industry are well-placed to develop employable students — some of whom go on to work for their alma mater’s parent company. At Sunway University, for example, students have opportunities to intern with the conglomerate, as well as with other organisations.

However, while the best ones may be driving innovation in higher education, there is also a “sleazy” underworld of companies setting up low-quality institutions for non-altruistic purposes, according to Altbach. For example, there are cases of property developers in Indonesia and the Philippines attempting to attract homebuyers with the promise of new universities that, in reality, are unlikely to offer much by way of quality education.

And even among the best of these universities, their demographic reach can be limited. “Despite their deep pockets, they’re, generally speaking, tuition dependent,” says Prof. Altbach. This means they tend to attract those who can afford to pay higher fees — middle-and upper-class students — which does little for improving access to higher education.

Depending on how they are set up, corporate-owned universities also risk falling prey to market fluctuations and shareholder whims. Sunway University, for example, only narrowly avoided being caught up in the 2007 financial crisis because the group’s founder, fearing bankruptcy, had moved the institution to the control of a non-profit foundation.