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King Edward VII College of Medicine
The establishment of the university began with the issue of a shortage of medical assistants in Singapore and Penang during the late 1890s. The problem was addressed in a report published by the Education Commission in April 1902. The report stated that the commission was in favour of establishing a medical school to fulfil the demand for medical assistants in government hospitals. However, such a view was not in favour among the European community.
Legislation was passed by the Straits Legislative Council in June 1905 under Ordinance No. XV 1905. The school opened on 3 July 1905 and began functioning in September. On 28 September 1905, Sir John Anderson officiated the school under the name 'The Straits and Federated Malay States Government Medical School.'
The school was located in the old Female Lunatic Asylum near the Singapore General Hospital at Sepoy Lines off New Bridge Road, where four of the asylum buildings were converted into a medical school. In 1907, a lecture hall and laboratory were added. There was no library and room to keep pathological specimens.
In 1905, there were 17 medical students, four students attending the hospital assistant course. Five years later, the enrolments increased to 90 medical students and 30 trainee hospital assistants. The school had only one permanent staff, which was the Principal; the teaching staff were employed on a part-time basis. The Principal was Dr Gerald Dudley Freer, who previously served as Senior Colonial Surgeon Resident of Penang.
The School Council wanted to gain recognition of its Diploma by the General Council of Medical Education in the United Kingdom to ensure that the Licentiate of Medicine and Surgery Diploma offered by the school would gain worldwide recognition. In 1916, the GCME recognised the Licentiate of Medicine and Surgery Diploma offered by the school. The licentiates were placed on the General Council's Colonial List of the British Medical Register and were entitled to practise anywhere within the British Empire.
In 1910, Dr Robert Donald Keith became the second Principal of the School. The first two years of the five-year course were devoted to pure science studies. Physics, biology, and chemistry were taught in the first year, followed by physiology and elementary anatomy in the second year. The remaining three years were attachment to clinical clerkships in medicine, surgery, and midwifery, which covered pathology, hygiene, and medical jurisprudence. Materia Medica was integrated into the fourth year, where practical pharmacy was taught.
Students were posted to several hospitals, initially at the Singapore General Hospital. From 1908 onwards, attachments were made to Tan Tock Seng Hospital (for medicine and surgery) and Kandang Kerbau Maternity Hospital (for midwifery).
In 1912, the medical school received a endowment of $120,000 from the King Edward VII Memorial Fund, started by Dr Lim Boon Keng. Subsequently, on 18 November 1913, the name of the school was changed to the King Edward VII School of Medicine.
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In the first batch of 16 students of 1905, only seven made it to the final and graduated in May 1910, while the remaining six students graduated four months later, and others resigned from the school. In 1919, the drop-out rate had risen to 35%, while in 1939 the number of students who failed in their final examinations stood at 44%.
At this time, a hostel was built to accommodate 72 male students from the Federated Malay States.
In 1921, the school was elevated in status to a college. Between 1920 and 1930, the college went through a series of transformations, by replacing the old teaching staff with a younger generation of professionals and also nine new Chairs were created, the first in Anatomy in 1920, followed by Medicine, Surgery, and Midwifery & Gynaecology in 1922 and Clinical Surgery, Bacteriology, Biology, Bio-Chemistry, and Dental Surgery in 1926. And the tenth chair for Pathology was created in 1935.
In 1923, the college's new building at Outram Road was commenced. It was completed in November 1925 and officially opened by Sir Laurence Guillemard in February 1926. During the opening ceremony, the college conferred Honorary Diplomas on Sir David James Galloway, Dr Malcolm Watson and Dr Lim Boon Keng.
In 1929, Dr George V. Allen, the new principal, took the helm, succeeding his predecessor, Dr MacAlister.
Raffles College
The establishment of Raffles College was a brainchild of Sir Stamford Raffles and Dr Robert Morison. Sir Stamford had some knowledge of the Malay language and culture, while Morison was a distinguished Sinologist missionary. Both men wanted to establish a centre dedicated to the study of Malays and Chinese at the tertiary level.
On 5 June 1823, a site designated for an educational institution had its foundation stone laid by Sir Stamford. Soon after that, Raffles left for England and Morrison left for China, thus the establishment of the school never happened. The school building was revived as an English school named the Raffles Institution.
In 1918, Sir William George Maxwell, the Colonial Secretary of the Straits Settlements, chaired the Maxwell Committee to review the scheme to commemorate the centenary of the founding of Singapore by Sir Stamford. The committee members were Roland Braddell, A.W. Still, Seah Ling Seah, Dr Lim Boon Keng, Mohammed Yusoff bin Mohammed, N.V. Samy, and Mannesseh Meyer. The working committee, headed by H.W. Firmstone, recommended the establishment of a college for tertiary education to commemorate the centenary founding of Singapore. On 12 July 1919, the Government decided to undertake the construction of the building with a cost not more than $1,000,000 and would contribute $50,000 as annual recurrent expenditure as soon as the Centenary Committee had collected $2,000,000 for the Raffles College Endowment Fund. On 31 August 1920, the committee had achieved the figure, amounting to $2,391,040. On 31 May 1920, Richard Olaf Winstedt was appointed as the Acting Principal of Raffles College. The course offered was on a three-year basis. The establishment of the school was seen far more systematically compared to the King Edward VII Medical College. The school was situated at a site called the Economic Gardens and was designed by Cyril Farey and Graham Dawbarn. And the construction took place in 1926.
Following the completion of the first hostel, Raffles College was opened informally to students on 12 June 1928. Of the first 43 students, nine were private students, and the rest were government-funded; there were two women among this first cohort. On 22 July 1929, Raffles College was formally established. Its students studied either arts or sciences and graduated with a diploma after three years. Science students were permitted to use the labs of the King Edward VII College. Four years later, the College Council proposed changes in the curriculum so that the Diploma could be furthered to a Degree through external examinations in collaboration with universities in England.
In 1937, Sir Shenton Thomas declared the college would have a full-time principal. The college had its fourth principal, Alexander Keir, succeeding Frederick Joseph Morten. By 1939, war was waged in Europe and had put a halt to the development of the college. The war in Europe came to Asia, and Singapore was invaded by the Japanese in February 1942.
After the war, the school was reopened, and W.E. Dyer was the principal. The future of Raffles College was uncertain until 1948 when Dr George V. Allen (later Sir), who was formerly the principal of King Edward VII Medical College, posted as the last principal of Raffles College. The college was amalgamated with the former to establish a university for the Malays.
Universiti Malaya (1949–1962)
In 1938, the government appointed a commission under the chairmanship of Sir William McLean to study the higher education potential and progress in Malaya. The Commission concluded that Malaya was not ready to have a university and that a university college would be more suitable.
In 1943, Oliver Stanley, the Secretary of State for the Colonies, appointed a commission of inquiry chaired by Cyril Asquith to consider the development of higher education in the colonies across the British Empire. The Asquith Commission, reporting in 1945, endorsed the McLean Commission's recommendations for Malaya.
In 1946, Raymond Priestley, the Vice-Chancellor of Birmingham University and member of the previous Asquith Commission, was invited by the British Malaya Government to visit and discuss the application of the Asquith Commission's recommendations to Singapore and Malaya. Priestley again recommended the establishment of a university college as a first step.
In January 1947, the Secretary of State for the Colonies, now Arthur Creech Jones, appointed Alexander Carr-Saunders, Sir Alexander Carr-Saunders, to chair a commission determining the details of establishing a university college in Malaya. In March of the same year, the other members of the commission were announced, and George Allen, principal of King George VII College, was appointed principal-designate of the planned university college. Carr-Saunders listened to the thoughts of the alumni association and students' union of King Edward VII College; he was impressed with the ideas of the president of the students' union, Kanagaratnam Shanmugaratnam. In 1948, the Carr-Saunders Commission recommended the immediate establishment of a full university, bypassing the intermediate step of a university college recommended by previous commissions.
As a result, the institution named the Universiti Malaya was chartered under the Carr-Saunders Commission in 1949. The formation of the Universiti Malaya on 8 October 1949 in Bukit Timah Campus (Former site of Raffles College), Singapore came from the merger of King Edward VII College of Medicine and Raffles College, which had been established in 1905 and 1929, respectively.
In the Carr-Saunders Commission's report in 1949, it was stated that "the university shall act as a single medium of mingle for enhancing the understanding among the multi-ethnics and religions in the back of Malaya. The University too should be modelled after the tertiary education in the United Kingdom of Great Britain in terms of academic system and administration structure".
The Carr-Saunders Commission postulates "the principle that all children who show the necessary capacity should enjoy an equal chance of reaching the University; and, in particular, that no able child should be handicapped in climbing the educational ladder by race, religion, rural domicile, or lack of means."
In 1959, the university was divided into two autonomous campuses, one in Singapore, known as University of Malaya in Singapore, and the other in Kuala Lumpur (Universiti Malaya in Kuala Lumpur).
Universiti Malaya (re-established 1962)
In 1961, the governments of Malaysia and Singapore passed laws to split the Universiti Malaya into two national universities. As a result, on 1 January 1962, the Universiti Malaya was re-established on the 309-hectare campus in Kuala Lumpur, retaining its original name and becoming the only university in the post-independent Malaya. The Bukit Timah campus in Singapore became the University of Singapore (today the National University of Singapore).
On 16 June 1962, the newly independent university in Kuala Lumpur celebrated the installation of its first Chancellor, Tunku Abdul Rahman, Malaysia's first Prime Minister. The first Vice-Chancellor was former Dean of Arts, Sir Alexander Oppenheim, the mathematician who formulated the Oppenheim conjecture in 1929. When Oppenheim left in 1965 with no successor in sight, Rayson Huang who later became the Vice Chancellor of Nanyang University, Singapore in 1969 and in 1972 went on to become the first Asian Vice-Chancellor of the University of Hong Kong, was asked to take over as the Acting Vice-Chancellor. He served in that capacity for 12 months but declined reappointment to return to academic pursuits.
Chin Fung Kee, an authority in geotechnical engineering, replaced Huang as Acting Vice-Chancellor until the university filled the position in 1967 by the appointment of James H.E. Griffiths. A distinguished physicist and a fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford, Griffiths was also the former head of Clarendon Laboratory of University of Oxford, and one of the discoverers of ferromagnetic resonance.
UM remained Malaysia's primary public university until 1 June 1969, when the nation's second public university – Universiti Sains Malaysia was established in Gelugor on Penang Island.
On 1 March 1997, UM became the first university in Malaysia to be corporatised, in a move intended by the Federal Government to decentralise and transform public universities to become more effective and competitive.
From Wikipedia’s article on University of Malaya, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.3