Putra Business School (PBS) is an autonomous private business school located in Universiti Putra Malaysia (UPM).
PBS was renamed from UPM Graduate School of Management (GSM) at the Lembaga Pengarah UPM (LPU) (UPM Board of directors) meeting on 6 July 2011, in response to a Cabinet Memorandum (Memorandum Jemaah Menteri) dated 24 October 2007) to elevate the status of business schools in Malaysia.
PBS is privileged to have been identified by the Ministry of Higher Education as one of the “top business schools” in Malaysia for this purpose.
A private foundation, Yayasan Putra Business School, was created to allow PBS to exist as a private university.
Yayasan Putra Business School (Co.Reg.958242) was formed on 23 August 2011 as a not-for-profit company limited by guarantee (a foundation), with its own Memorandum and Articles of Association, for the sole purpose of bringing into existence and managing PBS. No other activity is permitted under Act 555. The Minister of Higher Education invited YPBS to establish PBS on 19 December 2011 and its education licence for operation was issued on 9 October 2012.
It has been explicitly recorded in the Memorandum of Association of YPBS that:
“The object for which the Yayasan is established is to perform all functions relevant as a governance body of the Putra Business School:
- To become a home-grown globally recognised Business School which offers business management programmes designed upon a human-centered world view of reality (including business and education) promoting human governance;
- To uphold academic excellence and to nurture human leaders with God-consciousness attributes relevant to the community;
- To attract industry and international interest which is relevant for the propensity of recognition as the country’s Top Business School in essence.
This was further repeated in Section 5 of the Constitution of Putra Business School (PBS)
“5. The primary object for which the University is established is to provide higher education with a view to nurture human leaders who subscribe to human governance as embodied in whole persons and take any action incidental thereto in accordance with all provisions of the Act[555] and this Constitution.”
With this arrangement, Putra Business School (PBS) as an autonomous institution of higher learning in Malaysia (Institusi Pengajian Tinggi Swasta, IPTS) came into being with a clear mandate.
Accordingly, PBS cannot operate on its own and is accountable to Yayasan Putra Business School, which in turn must follow the law of the land as dictated by Companies Act 1965. PBS, operating within the structure of YPBS, is thus an autonomous university as defined by the Private Higher Education Institution Act 1996 (Act 555), with YBPS being the holding company of PBS.
The arrangement between UPM and PBS
A Memorandum of Agreement was signed on 31 Dec 2012 between UPM and YPBS, wherein UPM grants YPBS the licence to offer and conduct postgraduate programmes to the standard established by UPM (MBA, MM (IT), MSc, PhD) and to use UPM facilities.