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The purpose of this article is to highlight the importance of waqf in financing higher education. Nowadays, higher education is costly and this has prevented students, especially those who are self-financed, from accessing such learning environments. This paper offer an alternative solution to relieve such a situation, namely, through the application of an endowment-based or waqf educational institution. The study suggests a way to establish an endowment university by concentrating the discussion on the concept and principles of its establishment, as well as sharing the experiences of the Malaysian waqf universities and the Turkish Foundation Universities/Vakif Üniversitesi in financing their universities using waqf, i.e. a pious endowment instrument.

The empirical data were mainly collected using in-depth interviews with the universities’ higher management authorities and some of the members of the board of trustees.

The findings show that the role of waqf or pious endowment is significant in providing financial assistance to their communities as well as strengthening their academic quality. In addition, tawhidic epistemology together with morality and ethics have influenced waqf donors or founders to donate their wealth and property to enrich and sustain universities and higher education.

This article provides the experiences of the Malaysian Waqf Universities and the Turkish Foundation Universities/Vakif Üniversitesi in financing their universities using waqf. It also contains some good examples from the experience of several earlier Islamic civilizations, in particular those of the Ottoman Empire and the Mamluk Sultanate of Egypt. In addition, examples of the implementation of waqf and endowment-based universities in the UK and USA as well as the Al-Azhar University of Egypt is also included.

This paper aims to highlight the importance of waqf in financing higher educational institutions (HEIs) and its potential as an alternative source of generating additional funds for the HEIs, and discourses on waqf practice, fundraising, waqf management and utilisation of waqf income for the development of higher education in Malaysia.

This paper is based on the information gathered through interviews with 12 participants who are actively engaged in waqf in different capacities. The participants can easily be classified into three expert groups; personnel of waqf-based universities, personnel of the respective State Islamic Religious Councils (SIRCs) and waqf practitioners. In addition, archival records, relevant documents and library sources have been used in the research.

The study learnt that waqf in Malaysia is centralised and exclusively controlled by the SIRCs, which are, as a rule, sole trustees of all categories of awqaf in the respective states; hence, any form of private trusteeship is considered illegal. It is a prerequisite for the establishment of a waqf fund to obtain permission from the respective SIRCs, and bring it under the purview of the council prior to setting up a waqf. The ministry of higher education has taken some initiatives to encourage HEIs to use waqf as an alternative source of generating funds. Subsequently, numerous public universities have set up waqf funds and developed a comprehensive mechanism for raising the fund through traditional and modern methods and technologies. A major chunk of the waqf funds is collected in the form of cash, but the amount falls short of reaching critical mass to enable the waqf to become self-sustaining. The study found that the universities also involved themselves in various social welfare programmes, especially in health care, and some income-generating projects besides seeking support from the waqf fund for their academic and educational activities.

The paper brings out the fact that waqf offers the best features as an alternative fiscal instrument to finance projects of public good, including higher education at three selected waqf-based universities in Malaysia.

The study’s findings will be helpful to the ummah in general and Malaysia in particular. It can help policymakers, legislators and academicians in formulating new strategies for the common good and sensitize the countries facing a huge fiscal deficit and lack of development to the viability and potential of waqf as a catalyst for progress and economic activity.

The paper shares the experience of Malaysia’s waqf-based universities, waqf fundraising, management and income utilisation. It accentuates the fact that waqf can help finance academic activities at universities and sheds light on some useful examples of waqf-based universities founded in earlier periods of Islamic civilisation.

This study aims to design appropriate micro-fintech models for Islamic microfinance institutions (IMFIs), especially Baitul Maal wat Tamwil (BMT) in Indonesia, thus enabling BMT to combine Islamic social and commercial microfinance optimally.

This study uses the analytic network process and Delphi methods, with three groups of experts as the respondents, namely, academician-regulators, BMT practitioners and Fintech practitioners.

The first results show that the micro-fintech tools needed by IMFI/BMT are digital banking, payment, peer-to-peer (P2P) financing, P2P social and e-commerce. These could be developed by a BMT alone or with an APEX or Association, which could also collaborate with an existing fintech company that specialises in micro-fintech, applying the offline to online approach. This means that commercial funding, as well as social fundraising of zakat and waqf, would be conducted online, whereas commercial financing for micro and small enterprise customers and the disbursement of zakat and waqf would be conducted offline. The second results show that the limited open ecosystem and hybrid ecosystem are the most appropriate micro-fintech ecosystems for IMFIs/BMT, with various alternative models. In addition, the private closed ecosystem preferred by BMT would be feasible if all criteria show improvement in the future.

This study is qualitative in nature. The methods used have limitations, meaning the models could be improved by incorporating other methods. Moreover, the case and respondents are all Indonesian, which means that the results may only be applicable to BMTs in Indonesia.

A BMT and/or BMT association could immediately apply micro-fintech with a limited open ecosystem, while in the future, they could apply micro-fintech with a private closed ecosystem.

The micro-fintech model could be used to optimise the collections of zakat, infaq and waqf, meaning BMT could provide more social programmes for those in need.

The growth of fintech in Islamic microfinance has occurred only recently, while only a limited number of studies have been conducted; therefore, no study exists on the development of a micro-fintech model appropriate for IMFIs, especially BMT.

Purpose – This chapter analyses the socio-economic development of the Muslim community in Kelantan through the establishment of the Bazar Wakaf Rakyat (People’s Waqf Bazar).

Methodology/approach – A qualitative method of data acquisition through interviews. Among the informants interviewed were the authority of waqf matter, the tenants of Bazar Wakaf Rakyat X, the tenants of Bazar Wakaf Y, the committee members of mosque X and local people in Kelantan.

Findings – The research indicates that the Bazar Wakaf Rakyat plays a role in enhancing the economic and spiritual development of the Kelantanese people. Economic development occurs through affordable rental rates, job opportunities, the construction of Bazar Wakaf Rakyat in strategic locations and the types of products being sold. The Bazar Wakaf Rakyat built inside the mosque compound also plays a part in spiritual development.

Originality/value – This chapter is the first to discuss issues relating to Bazar Wakaf Rakyat in Kelantan.

Recently the revival of the institution of waqf took a movable form especially in terms of the creation of cash waqf which found its ways as one of the financial institutions financing different goods and services in the different countries. In an attempt to enrich the literature on this area, this study is an extension to the authors' work, focusing mainly on the different goods and services provided by different cash waqf schemes in Muslim and Muslim minority countries without depending on the government to provide their needs. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

This study uses data collected from primary sources including text from the Hadith, while data collected from secondary sources include books, articles, journals besides web sites and e-books.

The findings show the potential of cash waqf in financing not only religious areas but also financing different goods and services needed globally, such as education, health, social care and commercial activates, basic infrastructures, besides opening jobs for the majority of people.

The expected outcome of this research is to open the door wider for more researchers to explore the potential of cash waqf as one of the instruments to finance all sectors in Muslim and Muslim minority countries without exhausting government budget.

A revitalization of an old Islamic financial product to meet the different needs.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the extent of revenue diversification of selected Malaysian public higher learning institutions (HLIs) and the perceptions of senior officers of Malaysian public HLIs on matters related to revenue diversification.

The study analyses data from the HLIs’ financial statements to compute the Hirschman-Herfindahl Index (HHI) for revenue diversification and a perception survey with senior officers of the Malaysian public HLIs.

The results suggest that while a majority of the Malaysian public HLIs were still dependent largely on government funding, the more established and larger HLIs had a slightly more diversified revenue structure. The survey suggested that overall the senior officers were receptive to the need for revenue diversification.

The paper is largely based on a perception survey. Future work should utilise in-depth interviews and/or focus groups and a more in-depth analysis of financial statement data to provide richer data.

The study’s findings provide useful baseline data upon which further work may be built, particularly in the less explored developing country context. They will also prove useful to the administrators of public HLIs in other parts of the world facing a similar financial austerity situation.

The present study examines both the extent of revenue diversification of HLIs as well as senior HLI officers’ perceptions on revenue diversification strategies. Most prior studies on revenue diversification have examined non-profit organisations, not HLIs and most were either only perception-based studies or only looked at the extent of revenue diversification using the HHI.

This paper aims to improve the understanding of the institutional pressures that shape the intention to adopt waqf accounting and reporting. The study seeks to answer two research questions as follows: what are the challenges in the adoption of waqf accounting and reporting in waqf institutions; and how do institutional pressures influence the adoption of waqf reporting in Malaysia. Drawing on the work of DiMaggio and Powell and Scott of institutional theory, this paper provides empirical evidence of institutional pressures on the adoption of waqf reporting in Malaysia and the challenges faced in adopting waqf accounting and reporting.

This study uses qualitative research method with an explanatory case study approach. Data are collected through semi-structured interviews with the accountants of State Islamic Religious Council and Customs of Terengganu, an informal conversation with the Deputy Director of Accountant Generals Department of Malaysia and document reviews, mainly the Malaysian Accounting Standard Board Research paper.

The findings show that coercive pressure such as government regulation contributes to challenges in the adoption of waqf accounting and reporting. Normative pressures contribute to challenges in formulating standardised waqf accounting and reporting, whereas mimetic pressure contributes to challenges in the comparability of the waqf accounting and reporting among the state Islamic religious councils in Malaysia. In the efforts towards the standardisation of waqf accounting and reporting practice, a similarity of the process of the standard implementation or the institutional isomorphism of the State Islamic Religious Council in Terengganu is strongly influenced from the result of the mandate of its Board members and Fatwa council members (coercive isomorphism and religion logic) and minor influence from the normative isomorphism (the result of the participants’ education and profession) as well as the result of imitating other State of Islamic Religious Councils (SIRCs) because of the ambiguity of the process or certain practice.

The study contributes to the knowledge by extending institutional theory and the possible role of religion logic in Islamic perspective to organisational behaviour and accounting development in SIRCs. This study is limited to the understanding of the challenges in the adoption of waqf accounting and reporting but could also be applicable to the adoption of other accounting standards or regulations.

This paper offers key implications for research, in improving the understanding of contextual factors and decision to adopt waqf accounting and reporting. The standard setter needs to be aware of the influence of contextual factors that shape decision towards standardisation of accounting and reporting for waqf.

The interplay of institutional pressures and implications of religion logic provides an interesting approach to understanding the waqf institutions’ intention to adopt accounting and reporting for waqf.

The purpose of this paper is twofold: first, to elicit perceptions of senior officers on the overall financial sustainability of their institutions; and, second, to examine senior officers’ perceptions on important revenue diversification and cost management practices.

The study employed a questionnaire survey with senior academic and administrative staff of the 20 public universities in Malaysia. In total, 275 questionnaires were distributed and 69 were returned, yielding a response rate of 25.09 per cent. Descriptive statistics were used to analyse the general perceptions of the survey respondents on public university financial sustainability issues.

The study suggests that respondents are receptive of the financial sustainability challenges faced by their institutions. Respondents agree that increasing tuition fees may not be a feasible revenue enhancement strategy for public universities. Instead, all respondents agree that full utilisation of resources will be a key strategy that the universities can apply.

This study contributes to the limited research on the financial sustainability of public universities in developing countries. Findings of the study have implications for the financial management and governance of public universities in Malaysia and other countries facing similar fiscal challenges. The findings of the study also provide important empirical evidence for future work in the area.

This paper explores the institutionalisation of a financial sustainability agenda in Malaysian public universities.

The study uses semi-structured interviews and document analysis. New Institutional Sociology and the institutional logics perspective are utilised to frame the study and explain findings.

The findings reveal that universities manage the conflicting academic and financial logics to co-exist to ensure legitimacy and survival. By compartmentalising the functions of key divisions and through loose coupling, universities are able to support dual logics.

The paper provides university management and policy makers with insights into how leading universities in Malaysia cope with a financial sustainability agenda.

The present study documents how universities cope with and respond to government reforms and budgetary cuts in the context of a developing country, Malaysia. Most prior research in the area focuses on individual or organisational responses. This paper examines organisational-level responses but goes deeper to understand how universities, through three key divisions; bursaries, corporate strategy divisions and faculties manage to enable the multiple logics to co-exist through compartmentalisation and loose coupling.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate various strategies of Malaysian public academic libraries that have been implemented to support library financial resources and to describe the challenges faced by the public university libraries in implementing income generation activities.

A qualitative data collection approach using a structured interview has been employed to elicit the opinions of librarians working in public university libraries in Klang Valley, Malaysia. In total, five (5) interview transcripts have been analyzed using theme-based analysis.

This study shows that the Malaysian public academic libraries showed positive reactions toward income generation. Various activities of revenue generation are carried out to support library financial resources on a small scale. However, management support for this concept is poor resulted due to many problems in carrying out the activities.

This study provides insights into the importance of revenue generation activities as a source of library financial resources at public academic libraries. The strategies include the investment of academic libraries in implementing the activities related to the income generation. It is required for the library to add this activity in its library budget, the proper strategic planning and the introduction of various revenue generation activities.

This study contributes to the field of library and information management as it highlights the strategies of outside revenue generation activities in Malaysian public academic libraries. Library administrators could use the results to develop their strategic plans to ensure the success of the initiatives.