Students Perception Towards Malay Provisions in the Federal Constitution in the Context of Ethnic Relationship in Malaysia

This research aims to investigate the level of knowledge, understanding, acceptance and perception among the students of Public Higher Education Institutions towards the Malays in the Federal Constitution within the context of ethnic relationship in Malaysia. This research involved 800 respondents selected from four Public Higher Education Institutions. Data for this research was obtained from questionnaires which were analyzed using SPSS program. To serve that purpose, descriptive statistics such as frequency, percentage, min, cross-tabulation statistics and correlation coefficient were employed to explain respondents background and to evaluate the level of knowledge, understanding and acceptance as well as the students perception towards the Malays in the constitution. Research findings show that the level of knowledge, understanding and acceptance of the students towards the Malays in the constitution is generally high. The same goes to the students perception towards the Malays in the Federal Constitution in which they accept the fact that the position of the Malays is better than the non-Malays, the privileges enjoyed by the Malays have improved their standard of living and the use of quotas in government policies needs to be maintained. This is in line with the statement that the students are still aware and sensitive and the government should consider the privileges of the Malays in whatever policies they wanted to implement. However, students have started to accept that as nation of plural society, equal treatment should be given to all races and the use of quotas in government policies should be expanded to other races. They also started to accept that the poor and eligible non-Malays should also be given aids. Next, few recommendations are presented concerning issues that arises which are related to the position of the Malays in the constitution.