Language Policy and Planning: Understanding UKM’s Past, Present and Future Concerns and Responses

Malaysia has recently faced a drastic change in language policy. This has been a shift from Bahasa Melayu to English for the fields of science and technology in the educational system. Over the past period of thirty years, huge resources have been devoted to both status and corpus planning for Bahasa Melayu to develop and be used as a scientific and technological language. Given this stituation, the recent change in policy to English has been evoked varying responses and reactions, especially at Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM), which has played a major role in the development and modernization of Bahasa Melayu as a language of science. The present change has been driven by economic factors and the science and technology. This has resulted in an urgent need for human resource with the ability to keep up with knowledge acquisition in the field of science and technology, which is predominantly in English. Given this context, the concern of this paper will be to understand UKM’s responses and concerns regarding this major change. This will be juxtaposed against the history of the university and the wider social, economic and political factors that have spearheaded the recent shift in the medium of instruction for the disciplines of science and technology.