Recommendation

In order to encourage the low-income group to pursue higher level of education, we would like to recommend that government should organise an education foundation which make it compulsory for all the poor family to save money for their children’s future education. This saving plan will ensure that our future generation’s education level is secured as through the saving, poverty might not be the main obstacle that prevents them from pursuing their study. Therefore, parents should start register for an account of this education foundation once their child is born. The amount of saving will be contributed by both the government and parents on a monthly basis.

We have chosen Tunku Abdul Rahman (TAR) College and University of Tunku Abdul Rahman (UTAR) in determining the duration of general academic progression of Bachelor Degree level of education. The duration for Diploma study is 2 years and 4 months and the Degree study in UTAR would take 2 years and 5 months. In other words, the entire progression would take 4 years 9 months or 57 months.

Besides that, according to Legenda Education Group (2010), the basic living expenses for a student pursuing Degree level of study is RM 10, 260 for the entire period, provided that the student is staying with his family, having lunch only at school canteen, no entertainment expenses, attending 5-day classes and travel to school by bus. These living expenses mainly comprise of bus fare, meal and mobile phone fees. The education fees have been excluded as the government should make the Perbadanan Tabung Pendidikan Tinggi Nasional Study Loan available to all the students from poor family.

The purpose of determining the duration of study and basic living expenses of a tertiary student is to determine how much the parents should save monthly to be sufficient for their children’s future study. According to Wong (2012),the average household income for the poverty group in Malaysia is RM 800 per month. As mentioned earlier, parents should save for children education once the baby is born and the age eligible for tertiary study would be 18 years old. In other words, parents would have saved for 18 years before their children attend tertiary school. Hence, based on the computation, each parent would have to save RM 47.50 per month which is approximately RM 48 monthly.

After the computation of the amount of monthly saving, we would then determine how much portion the parents and government should contribute for this saving plan. As mentioned in the above, the average income of low-income earners is RM 800 monthly. Thus, the saving amount which is RM 48 would make up 6% of the parents’ total income.

However, in order to reduce the burden of the low-income earners, out of the 6%, government would contribute 4%, which is RM 32 per month whereas parents would only need to contribute 2% which is RM 16 monthly.

The following tables summarise the whole idea of this saving plan: