Thursday, 05 June – Universiti Malaysia Sabah (UMS) and Universitas Negeri Jakarta (UNJ) collaborations especially in education is able to acculturate academic programmes in both university.

Sabah Minister of Tourism, Culture and Environment, YB Datuk Seri Panglima Masidi Manjun said, both universities should move forward together in a group in order to compete with other higher education institution at the global level.

“UNJ will be celebrating its 50^th year’s anniversary while Universiti Malaysia Sabah will turn 20^th years. The difference between the years is not important; the importance is achieving goals to improve this region’s educations which demanded both universities to unite,” he said when inaugurated the International Conference on Education 2014 (ICEdu14).

He also salutes the profession as educators whom have been contributing a lot to the nation’s children progress even though it was a heavy burden.

“Educator as a profession are less appreciated and less paid. However, the educators are always serious in engaging in education field without hoping to gains profits.”

“For the educators, the profits will be the communities’ education development, making educators as respected careers,” he added.

He also hope this two days conference is able to discuss topics regarding enhancing the status and qualities in education through presentations quality papers.

The conference is the first conference organised by Universiti Malaysia Sabah and UNJ. With the “Empowering Educators, Acculturating Education and Honouring Teaching Profession” theme, the conference accepted 217 presentation papers; 77 presenters are form UMS, 89 presenters are from UNJ while the rest are from the regions education institutions.