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Haim Hilman Abdullah, Jitra state assemblyman and Kedah executive councillor for Higher Education, Science, Technology and Innovation, has become a recurring flashpoint in Malaysia’s higher education discourse, amid a string of claims that government officials have repeatedly disputed.
A member of PAS within the Perikatan Nasional (PN) coalition, Haim Hilman previously served as Vice-Chancellor of Universiti Utara Malaysia (UUM) before entering full-time politics.
Haim Hilman’s most recent claim alleged that over 32,000 China nationals are enrolled in Malaysian public universities – a figure he framed as a threat to local students’ opportunities.
The Ministry of Higher Education (MOHE) countered that international undergraduates make up only around 3.44 per cent of total undergraduate enrolment, meaning they do not displace local students admitted through separate channels.
UKM and USM separately released their own enrolment breakdowns, showing that local students retain an overwhelming majority in undergraduate programs.
“Backdoor” Admissions and Seat-Selling
Haim Hilman went further, alleging that public universities sell admission seats to wealthy families, that unqualified students could buy their way in if they paid the fees, and that the University Admission Unit (UPU) centralised admission system lacked transparency.
Higher Education Minister Datuk Seri Zambry Abdul Kadir directly rejected the claims, stating that there is no such thing as “back door admissions” in public universities and that the allegations were unfounded.
The fallout escalated when Haim Hilman was formally charged in a Seremban court under Section 505(b) of the Penal Code for allegedly making statements likely to cause public alarm.
He pleaded not guilty.
A commentator on the claims summarised the core accusations as: universities selling seats to rich families, unqualified students buying entry, and a non-transparent UPU system — while noting that Haim Hilman had not yet produced concrete evidence for any of them.
The Bangladesh Graduate Claim
In a separate incident, Haim Hilman alleged that Malaysia had agreed to absorb 10,000 Bangladeshi graduates into the local workforce, citing a Bangladeshi media report as his source.
Zambry publicly rejected this as well, calling the claim baseless and inaccurate, and noted that such claims required credible evidence rather than being drawn from foreign news snippets.
Haim Hilman maintained that his “Graduate Pass” claim had solid grounds, defending his position even after the ministerial denial.
Adding another layer to the controversy, MOHE previously disclosed that Haim Hilman’s tenure as UUM’s ninth Vice-Chancellor was cut short — serving from January 2022 to January 2023, roughly one year into what should have been a longer term — following an official leadership performance report.
MOHE was called to clarify this after Haim Hilman, in viral videos, suggested that his departure from the post was unexplained or abrupt.
Transparency Crusader Or Data Selectivity?
Across all three claims — Chinese student numbers, backdoor admissions, and Bangladeshi graduates — the same pattern repeats: a dramatic allegation, a ministerial rebuttal, and then Haim Hilman returning not with a retreat but with more data.
The China-student claim illustrates this most sharply, escalating from a single headline figure to a five-year, five-university dataset built to counter the universities’ rebuttal point by point.
Critics argue this reflects a pattern of using selective or partially contextualised figures for political traction rather than substantiated policy critique.
Yet Haim continues to frame himself as the one demanding data-driven transparency that the ministry has allegedly failed to provide.
MCA vice president Datuk Lawrence Low Ah Keong has condemned the government’s use of Section 505(b) of the Penal Code against him, warning that charging an academic and state leader over university allocation complaints creates a “climate of fear” that suppresses legitimate public discourse.
The defence is notable: as a Barisan Nasional (BN) component party, MCA has little political incentive to shield a PAS figure.
That it has done so anyway signals the charges have unsettled a broader coalition of voices well beyond Haim’s own camp.
