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KUALA LUMPUR - The Malaysian Association of Private Colleges (Mapco) yesterday expressed its support for the Education Ministry's "Gempur dan Hebah" (name and shame) exercise to weed out the black sheep in the private education sector.

Its secretary-general, Datuk Dr Teo Chiang Liang, said in a statement here that the exercise would free genuine and legal operators from being "painted with the same brush" as the minority black sheep.

"Mapco is prepared to work closely with the Ministry of Education in the latter's 'Gempur dan Hebah' exercise," he said, adding that none of the seven colleges ordered closed by the Education Ministry on Tuesday was a Mapco member.

He was commenting on newspaper reports yesterday on the closure of seven private colleges for running courses without licences.

Dr Teo also hoped that the ministry would shorten the time required to process and approve applications to conduct courses so as to avoid cases of "jumping the gun" by colleges to offer courses which were still pending approval.

"Private colleges, like any other businesses, need to generate returns on money invested to conduct courses applied for and cannot afford to wait for long periods to start the machinery to recover the investments," he said. The association also advised students intending to take up courses at private colleges to request to be shown a copy of the college licence issued by state education department before enrolling to avoid any problem later.

Students of the seven colleges who wish to look for alternative places to study could log on to the Mapco website at www.studymalaysia.com/mapco he added. - Bernama