page_title: Malaysian Indians
section_title: Education
hierarchical_section_title: Malaysian Indians / Education
caption_attribution_description: English: Malaysian Indian boys at Koperasi Sek. Men. Keb Chio Min Berhad 中文（简体）‎: 马来西亚印度南海在觉民国民型中学合作社
context_page_description: Malaysian Indians or Indian Malaysians is a local ethnic group in Malaysia. The group is defined as local Malaysians of Indian or South Asian ancestry. Today, they form the third largest group in Malaysia after the Malays and the Chinese. Most are descendants of those who migrated from India to Malaysia during the British colonisation of Malaya.
  Majority of Malaysian Indians are ethnic Tamil Indians, with other smaller groups such as Malayali, Telugu, Sikhs and others. Malaysian Indians form the 5th largest community of Overseas Indians in the world. Within Malaysia, they represent the third largest group, after the ethnic Malay and Chinese. They are usually simply referred to as "Indian" in Malaysia, Orang India in Malay, "Yin du ren" in Chinese.
  Malaysia's Indian population is notable for its class stratification, with large elite and lower income groups and diverse racial differences even within its fold. Malaysian Indians make up a disproportionately large percentage of professionals per capita - constituting 15.5% of Malaysia's professionals in 1999. As of a census taken in 1984, up to 38% of the nation's medical professional workforce consists of Malaysian Indians.
context_section_description: The economic state of Malaysian Indians is stratified and the distribution of wealth is uneven. However, while many Indians are part of the Malaysian working class, there also exists a large group of educated upper middle class professionals.
  Indians are well represented in Malaysian medical and legal fraternities. Indians also form a large portion of English language teachers in Malaysia. Law and medicine have traditionally been the preferred career choices in Indian families although more young Indian Malaysians are now venturing into other fields such as engineering, finance and entrepreneurship. Ananda Krishnan and Tony Fernandes are examples of notable Malaysian tycoons of Indian heritage. There are major Indian business districts in Kuala Lumpur (Brickfields, Jalan Ampang and Jalan Masjid India); (Lebuh Pasar) in George Town, Penang; Jalan Tengku Kelana in Klang, Selangor; and Ipoh, Perak. Tamil primary schools are funded by the Federal Government and use Tamil as the medium of instruction while Malay and English are taught as compulsory subjects. The government's failure to impose Malay as the sole unifying language throughout the country's educational systems unlike in China with Standard Chinese or Indonesia with Indonesian language are mainly attributed to the racial-based policy enforcement of ethnic inclusion and exclusion. Some argue that the educational policies imposed by the federal government over the years in regard to minority language education have created negative consequences for Malaysian youth: a mounting brain drain in particular. A study from 2000 found that the country had lost an ample amount of talented and skilled youth to other more favourable countries as the result of students form the large non-Malay minority language communities being forced to go to university abroad because they did not attend Malay language schools.
caption: Malaysian Indian boys in school.
exif: {"Image Software": "Inpaint"}