On December 5, 2009, about 60 delegates and members of the press converged at Wawasan Open University (WOU) for a briefing and tour around the campus. The briefing was held at the Conference Hall at the 5th floor.

Dato’ Dr. Teng was invited to give an opening speech at first. He thanked WOU for arranging the briefing and tour and proceeded to introduce Professor Dr. Wong Tat Meng who would be promoted to become the Vice-Chancellor of WOU on December 6, 2009.

He mentioned that Parti Gerakan Rakyat Malaysia (PGRM) was very proud of WOU which was set up to provide education and life long learning including long distance learning for Malaysians and has been globally recognized. It also aimed at providing people with a second opportunity for tertiary education. WOU would also play a vital role in helping to achieve Wawasan 2020 and PGRM would together with WOU to achieve this.

This was followed by Prof. Dr. Wong’s briefing on WOU. He highlighted that WOU has always been conscious of PGRM sponsorship and he personally came back from Hong Kong to take up a post in WOU because he shared the vision and desire of PGRM to provide educational opportunity to the public.

He proceeded to give an institutional profile and history of WOU which was granted university status by Ministry of Higher Education in July 2006 and the main campus was launched in 2008. The main university site is at Penang with regional offices at Ipoh, Kuala Lumpur, Kota Bahru, Johor Bahru and another to be set up in Kuching. He also mentioned that other than the Penang and Kuching offices, the rest of the regional offices share with the respective states’ PGRM Headquarters.

With the financial support from the Wawasan Education Foundation (WEF), WOU provides: