How to check a Malaysian qualification on the MQR — and the things the register was never built to tell you

The Malaysian Qualifications Register is free, public, needs no login, and takes about a minute to use. It is at www2.mqa.gov.my/mqr, and it will tell you whether a named programme at a named institution holds full accreditation from the Malaysian Qualifications Agency.

It will not tell you several other things people assume they are looking at — and unusually, the register says so itself, on the same page as the search box. Most of what follows is quoted from those notices, because they are the most useful text on the site and almost nobody reads them.

There is also a second register. Programmes that hold provisional accreditation are not in the MQR at all; they are on a separate portal with a different address. Searching only the MQR and finding nothing is the single most common way to reach a wrong conclusion.

The lookup, step by step

The English-language search page is ecarianakr.cfm, reached from Search for Qualifications → Search by Keyword. The register’s own guide says a search can be run on any one of, or a combination of, these:

“Programme Code • Name of Qualification • Name of Institution • Field of Study • Type of Qualification • Level of Qualification • Location”

Two of those fields do more work than the others.

Name of Institution accepts partial strings, so search the shortest distinctive fragment of the name rather than the full legal name. Institutions rename themselves, and the register keeps the old name in the record as a “Previously known as” line — which means a search on the current name can still return the entry, but a search on a marketing name may not.

Location is a dropdown of Malaysian states plus, notably, Oversea, Others, United Kingdom and India. That field is not decoration; see the section on location below.

You can also tick up to three results and press Compare to put them side by side. That is the fastest way to see that two similarly named programmes at the same provider are different records with different histories.

What a full record actually contains

Click Detail on a result and you get a fixed set of fields. In the records we opened on 3 September 2026 the fields were:

Reference Number · Certificate Number · Name of Qualification · Date of Accreditation (from–to) · Compliance Audit · Name of Institution · Address · Telephone · Fax · E-mail · Website · Type · MQF Level · NEC Field (National Education Code) · Number of Credits · Mode of Study · Duration of Study · Remark(s).

That is the whole record. Read the list again with a transnational programme in mind and the gap is obvious: there is no field for a partner institution, a collaborative arrangement, or an awarding body. The record names one institution, and that institution is the Malaysian provider. If you came to the register to find out who confers your degree, the register does not carry that fact. That question is answered by other documents — see “Awarded by” and “taught by”.

Two fields are worth a closer look.

Reference Number carries a prefix that tells you which route the accreditation came through. In current records the prefixes include a bare letter-and-digits code for older accreditations, MQA/FA for full accreditation, and MQA/SWA for programmes registered by a self-accrediting institution. The provisional-accreditation portal uses a different set again — its search box states it accepts “P or MQA/PA or MQA/PSA or TVET/QP”. A reference number beginning MQA/PA is therefore not a full accreditation, and you will not find it in the MQR. What each prefix means for the certificate is set out in Provisional, full, self-accrediting.

Date of Accreditation is the field most often misread, and the register pre-empts it with a notice printed at the top of every detail page:

“Starting from 2007, MQA’s accreditation is perpetual unless stated otherwise. All accredited qualifications are subject to periodic maintenance audit to ensure continuous improvement. If the accreditation of a qualification is revoked, the cessation date will be displayed in the Malaysian Qualifications Register. Qualifications previously accredited under National Accreditation Board of (Lembaga Akreditasi Negara, LAN) have a validity period of 5 years and this information is stated in the MQR for reference purposes.”

So a date range whose end date is in the past is not, by itself, evidence that anything lapsed. It is routine to see several records for one programme covering consecutive periods, and to see LAN-era records carrying a five-year window because that is how LAN-era accreditation worked. Treat an end date as a fact about that record, not a verdict on the programme.

What the register says it does not cover

These four statements appear on the search page itself, in capitals in the original. They are the most important text on the site.

One — offshore delivery is out of scope by default.

“ONLY ACCREDITED PROGRAMMES offered by the Higher Education Provider (HEP) in Malaysia are listed in the MQR and it DOES NOT INCLUDE the offshore deliveries unless stated otherwise.”

This is why the Location dropdown contains Oversea, United Kingdom and India: some deliveries outside Malaysia are recorded, because they were stated otherwise. The default, though, is exclusion. A Malaysian provider’s programme taught somewhere else is not covered by its Malaysian entry unless the entry says so.

Two — in a dual award, only the Malaysian side is in the register.

“For dual awards, ONLY THE ACCREDITED QUALIFICATIONS AWARDED BY THE HEP IN MALAYSIA are listed in the MQR. The award conferred by the partner institution will neither be evaluated nor registered in the MQR.”

Read that second sentence closely. It is not that the partner’s award is recorded and marked differently. It is neither evaluated nor registered. If your arrangement produces two certificates, the MQR is silent on one of them entirely, and finding the Malaysian entry tells you nothing about the other. Which arrangements produce how many certificates is covered in the five TNE modes.

Three — accreditation attaches to a place.

“Accreditation is granted BASED ON THE LOCATION where the programme is conducted by the HEP unless stated otherwise. Programmes conducted at other locations that are not specified in the MQR are therefore NOT ACCREDITED.”

This is the sharpest sentence on the page and the easiest to skip. A provider with several branches does not automatically carry its accreditation to all of them. The record names an address; that address is part of the finding. If you are enrolling at a campus other than the one in the entry, the entry does not cover you.

Four — MQA will not check a person’s qualification, or a programme’s status, on request.

The recognition page states: “The verification of individual’s qualifications for local and foreign programmes will not be performed by MQA.” The detail pages add: “The verification of accreditation status of a programme will not be performed by MQA. This printed statement is sufficient for any related business.”

That second half is the practical instruction. There is no separate certificate to apply for and no office to email for confirmation. The printout of the record is the evidence. MQA also publishes a short page telling students how to produce that printout — search, click the display icon, print the displayed page — and notes that the printout “boleh digunakan sebagai bukti bahawa program atau kelayakan telah memperoleh Akreditasi MQA”: it can be used as proof that the programme has obtained MQA accreditation.

When the search returns nothing

An empty result is ambiguous, and the register lists the possibilities rather than leaving you to guess. It first directs you elsewhere:

“Should you fail to obtain the information for the programme searched at this portal, you may also check the programme through the portal on the Provisional Accreditation http://www2.mqa.gov.my/pasp for the status of Provisional Accreditation.”

Then it gives the four reasons a record may be absent:

“(a) Programme has obtained Provisional Accreditation, however has yet to reach the level of maturity for the Higher Education Provider (HEP) to apply for Full Accreditation; or (b) HEP did not apply for Provisional Accreditation and/or Full Accreditation; or (c) Programme was conducted before 1997; or (d) Programme failed to achieve Full Accreditation.”

Those four are not equivalent. One is a normal stage in a programme’s life, one is a decision the provider made, one is an artefact of the register’s start date, and one is a failure. The MQR cannot distinguish between them for you, and neither can anyone else from the outside. Checking the provisional portal eliminates the first; the rest require asking the provider directly, in writing.

The provisional portal’s own result table is much thinner than the MQR’s: Name of HEP, Reference Number, Name of Programme, Start Date, End Date. There is no MQF level, no credit count, no professional body. If your programme is only on that portal, those facts have not been published yet.

The public-service statement is a separate thing

There is a second output people conflate with accreditation. Since 1 January 2017 MQA has also issued an Equivalency for Public Services statement, which appears within a programme’s MQR information and is used, in MQA’s words, “by the Public Service Department (JPA) or The Appointing Authority (PBM) for the purpose of appointment into the Public Services.”

It is not granted to everything. MQA lists the levels that receive it — Certificate, Diploma, Advanced Diploma and Bachelor’s Degree — and then states plainly which levels do not:

“The following qualifications are not required for the purpose of appointment into the Public Service Sector and therefore ARE NOT GIVEN statement of Equivalency: Foundation Programme level, Graduate Certificate/ Diploma level, Postgraduate Certificate/ Diploma level, Master’s Degree level, Doctoral Degree level (PhD).”

A fully accredited master’s or doctorate therefore has no equivalency statement, and its absence means nothing about the qualification. For anything awarded before 2017, the relevant record is the older eSisraf system, which MQA still hosts and still points to.

Four checks worth running before you enrol

1. Search the MQR by institution fragment, not by course marketing name. Note the reference-number prefix and the address in the record.
2. If nothing comes back, search the provisional portal at www2.mqa.gov.my/pasp before drawing any conclusion.
3. Check the address in the record against the campus you will actually attend. The register states that other locations are not accredited unless specified.
4. If the programme involves a foreign partner, ask the provider in writing which body confers the award — because the register does not record it, and for a dual award it explicitly does not evaluate the partner’s side.

Every one of those is a fact that already exists in a document. None of them requires anyone to predict anything.

What this page does not do

It does not tell you whether any employer, professional register, admissions office or overseas assessor will accept a Malaysian qualification. Those bodies decide under their own published rules. MQA states that accreditation “is also a basis for other parties to recognise the programme for a variety of reasons” — a basis, not a decision. Where a body has published no rule, the honest answer is that there is no published rule.

This site summarises public rules. It does not carry out accreditation, does not verify qualifications, and does not stand in for MQA or any other regulator.

Related

• Provisional, full, self-accrediting — what each MQA status means for the certificate you end up holding.
• “Awarded by” and “taught by” — the fact the MQR record does not carry.
• The five TNE modes explained — which arrangements produce one certificate and which produce two.
• What “3+0” actually means — the label most often attached to Malaysian collaborative programmes.
• Validated vs franchised — the distinction no register displays.
• One award, four rulebooks — why an accreditation entry is not an answer about outcomes.