Marlborough is an international boarding school owned by an elite British private school of the same name founded in 1843. Another pedigreed school project is Raffles University Iskandar, which is run by a Singapore corporation that operates schools across Asia. (It has no relation to the Raffles Hotel.)

They are joined by the Netherlands Maritime Institute of Technology; two British institutions: the University of Southampton and the University of Reading; the Management Development Institute of Singapore; and a tie-up between Malaysia’s Multimedia University and the University of Southern California. The Johann Cruyff Institute for Sports Studies, a sports management school started by the Dutch soccer star Johann Cruyff, will operate a Malaysian campus here as well.

The only secondary school aside from Marlborough is the Raffles American School. The rest are institutes of higher education.

An increasing number of Western schools are opening campuses in Asia and the Middle East, and not without controversy. The Yale-National University of Singapore College, expected to start operations next year, has come under criticism by those who question whether a U.S. liberal arts college can operate in a society that does not have full political freedoms. From Abu Dhabi to Shanghai, there are concerns over whether schools can offer the same level of quality and academic freedom overseas as they do back home.

For foreign schools used to autonomy, operating in Malaysia has been challenging.

“The one big risk is whether you can adapt your proven model in one jurisdiction to another where there are fundamental differences,” said Professor Reginald Jordan, the provost at Newcastle’s Malaysian branch. He cited the example of the University of New South Wales, whose Singapore campus closed after just one semester in 2007.