Massive Education Complex Takes Shape in Malaysia

An artist’s rendition of plans for Raffles
University Iskandar’s campus, which is
 expected to open at the end of 2014 in
Educity.

A hodgepodge of gritty industrial towns and rural villages are being transformed into eco-city and trading zone that includes EduCity, which will include university campuses and private schools.

Malaysia is trying to upgrade a hodgepodge of gritty industrial towns and rural villages with Iskandar Malaysia, a planned eco-city and trading zone with districts for tourism, health care and education.

Part of the development is EduCity, a 240-hectare, or 600-acre, plot of land in Nusajaya, which is being developed by Iskandar Investment Berhad. This company is majority-owned by investment entities linked to the federal and state authorities. Iskandar Investment hopes that Nusajaya’s lush green fields, neatly paved roads and two theme parks will eventually become a second home to more than 16,000 students.

The developer has signed up 10 education institutions to set up local campuses in EduCity. Two of them, Marlborough College Malaysia and Newcastle University Medicine Malaysia, have begun full-time operations; the others are scheduled to do so by 2017. The developer is also building a 12,000-seat sports complex and a student village.

Marlborough is an international boarding school owned by an elite British private school of the same name founded in 1843. Another pedigreed school project is Raffles University Iskandar, which is run by a Singapore corporation that operates schools across Asia. (It has no relation to the Raffles Hotel.)

They are joined by the Netherlands Maritime Institute of Technology; two British institutions: the University of Southampton and the University of Reading; the Management Development Institute of Singapore; and a tie-up between Malaysia’s Multimedia University and the University of Southern California. The Johann Cruyff Institute for Sports Studies, a sports management school started by the Dutch soccer star Johann Cruyff, will operate a Malaysian campus here as well.

The only secondary school aside from Marlborough is the Raffles American School. The rest are institutes of higher education.

- Nytimes.com