Challenges of educational cash waqfs in Malaysia

Cash waqfs is a waqfs donation in form of cash money where the donation is given to a trustee such as a waqfs institution to be kept in a trusted fund to finance all social welfare and charitable activities. In Malaysia, the cash waqfs funds are distributed to three sectors: health care, education, and economic development sector. This study focuses on cash waqfs for the education sector due to a limited allocation by the Malaysian government, the high tuition fees at the university level, and the commandment by the Ministry of Higher Education (MOHE) to establish a university waqfs institution through waqfs and endowment because of the government budget constraint. Nevertheless, the implementation of cash waqfs for educational purposes is uneasy as the waqfs institutions encountered many challenges. Therefore, this study attempts to observe the fundamental challenges encountered by the waqfs institutions in implementing educational cash waqfs in Malaysia based on their internal and external challenges. Next, this study also aims to find out the main challenges of educational cash waqfs implementation during the Covid-19 Pandemic. In a qualitative method, primary data such as semi-structured interviews and secondary data are used in this study. Besides that, six respondents who are representative of waqfs institutions are involved in this study. The findings revealed the challenges encountered by each waqfs institution are varied to each other. In contrast, most of the waqfs institutions encountered the same challenges of educational cash waqfs during the Covid-19 Pandemic due to Movement Control Order (MCO) imposed by the Malaysian government. Then, the appropriate policy recommendations are suggested in this study to overcome these challenges by urging the authority bodies to take advance moves to develop the application of cash waqfs throughout the nation for a better education system and for the student's welfare.