Friday 4 July 2014

AiU and UUM

(Writing Assignment)

by Achmad Zulkarnain, Abdulrahman Alduais, and Zerkiny Him


Albukhary International University (AiU) is a private non-profit international university which is located in Alor Setar, Kedah. The owner of AiU is Syed Mokhtar Albukhary, he is the 7th richest person in Malaysia who has dream to build University for underprivileged and disadvantaged students from around the world without considering races or religious beliefs. Nevertheless, this university faced several problems within its management which led the founder to decide to close it and transfer students to other universities.

It is very hard to leave that place who has many experiences and stories in it, but leaving to get better education is the first priority. The students were given many universities to choose which one to be transferred to, and University Utara Malaysia (UUM) was one of them. However, Albukhary International University (AiU) and University Utara Malaysia (UUM) have one similarity in term of education system. However, both are different in term of accommodations and environments.

Educational system is simply defined as the way that a certain educational institution follows to educate its students. To compare the educational system of both AiU and UUM. We need to consider some of the characteristics of their system. For instance, by comparing the majors taught in both university, we find that AIU provided Bachelor of Business Administration, Banking and Finance, Information Technology, and Computer Science. Meanwhile, UUM offers the same majors with some extra ones. On the other hand, by relating the comparison to a deeper context, we should consider the subjects taught in both universities. Let us take the subject from BBA for example. Based on my own experience as a former student of BBA in AiU, I could say that we were taught almost the same subjects that UUM provides for its students, despite the fact that there are some slight differences related to Co-curriculum subjects. As a result, we can see clearly that AiU is similar to UUM in terms of educational systems.

Firstly, the different between AiU and UUM is accommodation. As we are the students from AiU, we realized that AiU is more convenience in term of accommodation than UUM. Every room provided a space to make comfortable and a bit wider include the study area. As an experience in AiU, the room has three members must from different countries. In addition, AiU is located in the town that has supermarket, bus station and taxi. So students, do not worry about transportation to go somewhere. Beside from that, the cost of living is expensive that UUM.

Another differences between those universities are environments surrounding. Can’t be denied that AiU is special from any universities in Malaysia. In term of population of international students, AiU is the most colorful environments. It’s about eighty percent to eighty-three percent of international students from more than 80 countries around the globe. Therefore, in that situation, the students should avoid their native language and start using English in campus. However, UUM is the opposite, it’s about 80 percent of local students. The possibility of students who are using their native language increase. On the other hand, AiU is smaller than UUM but has beautiful architecture of building from middle-east, such as Turkey, Iraq, Iran and so forth. But the environment in UUM is totally green-campus than AiU that is the reason of being here. The environment of the campus should be like in UUM whose has fresh air for our health, peaceful living to get study unlike in big cities.

To sum up, AiU has more contrast than UUM then similarities. AiU is quite different from UUM by its accommodation and environment. Nonetheless, both universities are similar to each other by the method used to deliver knowledge to students.


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