Kuala Lumpur, 1 September 2023 – INCEIF University is pleased to announce that it has been accorded the Berdaya Saing (Competitive) SETARA rating by the Ministry of Higher Education Malaysia (MOHE).

The four main criteria for the rating are general, teaching & learning, research and service. MOHE’s Malaysian Quality Evaluation System for University and University College Excellence or SETARA for short, measures the quality of all private and public universities and university colleges, including foreign branch campuses.

According to MOHE, higher education institutions (HEIs) under the Competitive category were those which are capable of competing at a higher level. The HEIs were evaluated and classified in a group of excellent (cemerlang) HEIs.

With the Competitive rating, among the benefits obtained by INCEIF, are as follows:

(a) excluded verification visit for certificate renewal application registration and application for approval international student recruitment;

(b) excluded verification campus visit for application to change/ add/ modify the premises;

(c) application for a course fee rate increase is allowed as requested;

(d) allowed upgrade application;

(e) application for the establishment of a branch is allowed.

In a statement, MOHE said it has changed the rating system for this year from 6 rating scales to only two categories which are Berdaya Saing (Competitive) and Berdaya Maju (Viable). A total of 90 or 86.54 per cent of the 104 HEIs including INCEIF have obtained the competitive results while a total of 14 or 13.46 per cent have obtained viable results for the Integrated Rating of Malaysian Higher Education Institutions (Equivalent) 2022.

The determination of the new categories considered the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on HEIs management, and seen as one of the fair and realistic approaches as the evaluated data covered the years 2019, 2020 and 2021 which were the years the country was hit by the pandemic.

Achieving a good rating in SETARA will directly impact INCEIF’s mission specifically in strengthening our reputation and academic excellence. Being the only postgraduate university specialising in Islamic finance, this acknowledgment from MOHE will certainly raise confidence among our stakeholders including faculty and staff, existing students as well as partners and prospective students.

Apart from SETARA, in November 2018, INCEIF received full accreditation from AACSB International, joining the top 5 per cent of business schools in the world to be accredited. It is the only Islamic finance university in Malaysia to receive this international accreditation.

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