PM to abolish AUKU in move to restore campus autonomy

KUALA LUMPUR, 31 AUGUST 2026 —

Prime Minister Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim signed the repeal of the Universities and University Colleges Act 1971 (AUKU) on 15 August 2026, ending more than five decades of state control over student organisations.

Koh Swe Yong, then an active member of the University of Malaya Chinese Language Society (CLS), recalled how student groups used theatre and cultural performances to highlight rural hardship across ethnic lines. “We showed how fishermen on the east coast were squeezed by middlemen, how pineapple plantation workers struggled, how hawkers fed their families,” he said. “These were universal issues, not confined to any single community.”

The repeal reverses the 1975 amendments to AUKU, which stripped student unions of financial control and cast activists as sources of disruption. Kamarazaman said the shift began when the government framed student leadership as a problem rather than a partner. “After 1975, administrators started seeing student leaders as troublemakers,” he said. “Financial oversight and programme approval were centralised, ending the era when students managed their own affairs.”

Before the clampdown, UM students took their activism beyond campus. They campaigned on urban resettlement in Tasik Utara, rural poverty in Baling, labour rights and international conflicts such as the Arab-Israeli war. “We made it clear that student struggles were not tied to any political interest,” Kamarazaman said. “We were part of society and we kept fighting.”

The crackdown culminated after the 1974 Baling demonstrations, when scores of student activists were detained under the Internal Security Act. Koh described 60 days in police custody followed by transfers to multiple detention centres. “I was beaten with rubber hoses during interrogation,” he said. For Kamarazaman, the experience failed to extinguish the convictions formed in his campus years. “Prison cannot change a person’s thinking,” he said. “Detention camps did not dilute our beliefs.”

Today, Kamarazaman acknowledges students now enjoy wider personal freedoms—joining political parties, holding office and contesting elections—but argues the next step is organisational autonomy. “Freedom should not stop at the individual,” he said. “Student bodies must be free to manage their own funds and design their own programmes, subject only to ordinary laws if misconduct occurs.” Koh, however, prefers to wait for the replacement legislation before judging whether the repeal delivers real change.

“If AUKU is scrapped but replaced by another higher-education act made without student input, we will have to see how it is implemented,” he said. “Any new law with other restrictions would mean no real transformation.”

Nearly 70 years after independence, the question is no longer whether students can speak, but whether universities can become spaces where independent thought, dissent and responsible self-management are practised daily. Critics warn repeal might simply encourage more street protests, yet the deeper promise is an academy less constrained by political pressure and corporate interests—one where students can shape ideas and influence national development.

For Malaysian businesses, the repeal removes a long-standing legal uncertainty around campus activity and may ease recruitment of graduates accustomed to greater autonomy.

Related: Kuala Lumpur