University's founder 'in a hurry' to make brainchild a global institution

When Limkokwing University of Creative Technology launched its Piccadilly campus in London last year, Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah Badawi was on hand to celebrate the opening of the country's first university in Britain.

In his speech, Mr Abdullah said to the university's founder and president, Lim Kok Wing: 'You seem to be in a hurry.' The prime minister was not joking. In the five years since it was awarded university status, Professor Emeritus Lim's brainchild has rapidly spread across the globe.

It now spans three continents and has 25,000 students from more than 140 countries on its global roll call, with numbers having increased four-fold in the past two years alone. With campuses in Jakarta, Beijing, Phnom Penh, Botswana, Lesotho and London, and more due to open in Bali, New York and Swaziland next year, Professor Lim has added new meaning to the phrase 'globalising higher education'.

The university's main campus in Cyberjaya, a technology park on the outskirts of Kuala Lumpur, is also a mini United Nations, with foreigners from 133 countries representing 60 per cent of the 9,000 students.

The university, which offers degrees and diplomas in disciplines such as design, multimedia, communications, business and IT, has about 500 Chinese students, the second-largest market behind Indonesia.

Professor Lim, an entrepreneur who established the college initially to train young Malaysians for the advertising industry, said he wanted to reverse the flow of students from east to west. Students can spend a semester studying at one of the university's overseas campuses.