Universiti Utara Malaysia (UUM), which was officially established on 16 February 1984, is the sixth Malaysian public university. It is the only university that was set up to specialise solely in management education from the very beginning of its establishment.
The planning of the construction of this sixth university began in August 1983 when the Ministry of Education Malaysia began to give form, in earnest, to the idea of setting up this university. On 19th October 1983, the Cabinet gave its official approval for this project in Kedah. At that time, the project was called “The Sixth University Project”. Several months later, the temporary office of the sixth university, officially named Universiti Utara Malaysia (UUM), was officially opened on 15th February 1984 in Jitra.
Four months after its official opening, the UUM office was relocated to its provisional campus – the Darul Aman Campus – in Jitra, in June 1984, when the first phase of the project had been completed. The relocation was carried out so as to be able to usher in the very first batch of students for the academic year which commenced in early June 1984. The Darul Aman Campus was on a 62-acre tract of land in Bandar Darulaman. It was 18 kms north of Alor Setar and 4.8 kms from Jitra.
In the meanwhile, the planning of a permanent campus for the university had already begun. This permanent campus was to be built on an area of 1,061 hectares in Sintok (in the district of Kubang Pasu), situated about 48 kms north of Alor Setar and 10 kms east of Changlun, a small town along the North-South Highway, near the Malaysia-Thai border.
The permanent UUM campus, referred to as the Sintok Campus, commenced operations on 15 September 1990. Situated in a former tin mining area, it is ensconced in a valley of lush tropical forests, embraced by blue hills, and watered by two rivers that flow along the middle of the campus.
