PUTRAJAYA, Malaysia: The Malaysian government is now studying China's proposal to recognise its higher learning institutions to increase the number of Malaysian students studying there.

Higher Education Minister Datuk Seri Mohamed Khaled Nordin said the ministry was currently working with Universiti Teknologi Mara and Universiti Malaya on drafting the guidelines to the matter.

"We want to come up with a framework that will lead to a win-win situation for both countries," he said after the ministry's monthly gathering here yesterday.

He said that by acknowledging China's higher learning institutions and for them to recognise the local universities in Malaysia, there would be no problems in the future for graduates to be employed in either country.

Citing the Ukraine incident in 2006 whereby some higher learning institutions were de-recognised by the government, he said that it would be best for the government to determine the status of the Chinese institutions to avoid the same untoward incident.

He said the guidelines and framework were scheduled to be completed by October this year.

"During Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak's visit to China last week, this issue was discussed and this proposal arose after graduates from both countries could not find jobs as their papers were not recognised by both countries."

Khaled said students from China were initially keen to study in the United States or Britain but in the wake of the global economic downturn, they were now turning to Malaysia.

"There are about 10,000 Chinese nationals studying here and we have almost 2,000 of our students studying business courses, Chinese traditional medicine and Mandarin over there."