Chief Executive Officer
Kolej MDIS Malaysia
Professor Hassan Ali is currently the Chief Executive Officer of Kolej MDIS Malaysia; a Singapore based private higher education institution at EduCity in Iskandar Puteri, Johor, Malaysia.
Professor Hassan Ali started his career as an Assistant Manager at Kuala Lumpur Kepong Berhad, a plantation based company. He then moved into academia and had a long and illustrious career spanning over 27 years at Universiti Utara Malaysia (UUM). At UUM he held various administrative positions such as the Director of the Career Development and Industrial Attachment Unit, Deputy Director of the Entrepreneurship Development Institute, Deputy Dean of the Faculty of Business Management, Chairman of Management Studies at the College of Business, Deputy Director of the University Teaching and Learning Centre, Executive Director of the Cooperative and Entrepreneurship Development Institute and culminating as the Deputy Vice Chancellor (Academic and International) from 2013 – 2017.
His main research interest lies in understanding human behaviour at work and he has undertaken numerous research in the areas of motivation, organizational citizenship behaviour, job satisfaction, safety culture, gender wage differences, work place bullying, stress in the workplace, integrity and corruption among others. He has presented numerous papers in local and international conferences as well as published in local and international refereed journals.
Professor Hassan Ali understand the importance and value of cooperation and partnership between university and industry and the role of work-integrated learning (WIL) in bridging the gap between theory and practice. WIL enables industry to transfer practical skills and knowledge through experiential learning thus enhancing the student’s employability upon graduation. He was appointed by the Ministry of Higher Education to lead a Task Force to draw up the guidelines for a novel WIL programme called 2u2i where students spend 2 years in university and another 1 to 2 years in industry following a curriculum that is skills based and tailored to industry needs. He has also established a strong network and connection with the World Association of Cooperative Education (WACE) a US based international professional organization dedicated to developing, expanding, branding and advocating for cooperative and work-integrated education programmes within industry and educational institutions.
Professor Hassan Ali holds a BSc. Agribusiness degree from Universiti Pertanian Malaysia, an MBA from University of Keele, UK, a PhD in Management from Aston University, UK and a Post Graduate Diploma in Entrepreneurship from Cambridge University, UK.