Prime Minister Abdullah Badawi has revealed his “National Higher Education Strategic Plan Beyond 2020″ on Monday (August 27). His main 3 points are…
1. With immediate effect, greater autonomy for universities the chance to upgrade the institutions and source for funds for projects.
2. Introduction of Apex University - to be identified from the existing 23 public universities - would even be allowed to recruit their own faculty and students. Only the best students will be admitted into the apex universities.
3. Audit assessment committees, comprising experts, will be established to evaluate and rate academic achievements in higher institutions of learning.
I don’t think Badawi’s plan is going to work; he has no idea on what is happening with our local universities at all. His plans are based on his own perception without researching into the problems… his plans provides no solutions at all. Malaysia will be lucky if his plans are not worsening our current education state.
Political Issue
Giving more autonomy to universities sounds good; but Pak Lah should know that the politics within local universities (public U in particular) is nothing less than the country politics. Lots of the lecturers are not interested in teaching, but seeking their own agenda for higher post and influence.
Besides, the racial bias of public universities’ top management is one of the worst in any sectors in Malaysia. There was a mass exodus of non-bumiputera academicians when Malaysia started introducing private universities in the 90s… money was one of the main reasons, the unfair treatment from public U is another major factor.
When I was in UM some 7-8 years ago; they were some lecturers from India and Pakistan. Set aside their English accent, they were great lecturers, but were treated with no respect at all by other local lecturers.
[Read Lim Kit Siang's story on the bias issue]
Research Funding and Credibility
Our universities are never short of research funding; it’s just that most funds are not properly managed and wasted needlessly.
I have a friend that works in the intellectual property (IP) field… I was told that the local universities are spending hundreds of thousands (probably millions) monthly in hiring IP agency to file their ‘creation’. The thing is, most of those creations are worthless and won’t bring any academic or commercial value.
I have a few friends that are doing (or have done) their Master and PhD degrees in local universities… I always laugh at how easy their postgraduate degrees could be obtained, and they know that it is a fact.
One of my friends is graduating as a PhD holder from USM, he was paid by the university to be a research assistant while obtaining his PhD, but all he did for the past 5-6 years was watching porn and playing online games. Bravo!
Apex University? We had that in the 80s
It’s tough to get in local universities prior to the 90s, for non-bumiputeras in particular. We didn’t need to identify a specific ‘Apex University’ back then, the university go-ers were capable of evaluating the best university of their own, and because spaces were limited, only qualified students were admitted to the best university.
The whole ‘best university getting best students’ scenario was crashed when Malaysia decided to open university after university in the last decade without considering the quality of both the academicians and the in-take undergraduates.
If I remember correctly… early 90s we have 7 public universities; late 90s we have 9 public and a few private; and less than a decade later, we have 23 public universities and countless private universities. Malaysia doesn’t have the pool of qualified academicians to maintain the level of all the universities we have… some of the universities have to resort to sub-standard academicians.
What’s the point of having bunches of unqualified graduates?
One of the biggest mistakes Philippines has made in the 80s was producing large number of graduates while not having enough working opportunities… and it seems like Malaysia is heading the same direction by giving out degrees too easily.
What’s the point of producing large numbers of graduates if we don’t have enough relevant job opportunities for them? Besides, the large intake has jeopardized the academic level or local universities… some of the students shouldn’t be allowed in universities at all. On the other hand, some graduates shouldn’t be allowed to graduate. Large number of graduates are allowed to graduate due to other factors, and not based on academic achievements.
The dilemma for some private sectors these days is that they are not capable of finding enough good fresh grads to fulfill their vacancies.
They have problems in finding good candidates to fill in positions that don’t need a degree holder as well, because they are simply too many degree holders… and this created a large gap of qualification to fill in positions like typists and office admins etc. SPM graduates are not good enough for that, and degree holders don’t want to do that; most of them rather stay unemployed.
Language barrier
We have undergraduates that are poor in English, we have lecturers that have bad English as well, and we have lecturers that can’t understand BM at all.
The language issue is a huge problem for local universities. We have to resort to bilingual learning, but that’s not efficient. We certainly can’t go for all BM teaching at the moment because we don’t have enough local academicians to support the cause. We can’t go for all English teaching as well because some of students and lecturers are so bad at it.
In my days I had course-mates that had to finish their thesis in BM while their supervisors were foreigners that couldn’t understand most of the words. My course-mates still managed to graduate somehow… I am still wondering how on earth did that happened.
We need to define a definite language medium for our universities in future plans… BM or English. Either way will take a long journey, but we need to start somewhere. Bilingual could still work, but it’s rather ridiculous… I am an engineering graduate; I forget how to say ‘pengamiran’ in English, and I am not sure how to say pneumatic in BM. Shame on me, but the university teachings are partly blamed for this.
Basic Knowledge
Back then I had friends that had never touch a computer before entering university, but I guess the situation has improved a lot these days. However, lots of graduates are still lacking in some basic computering knowledge that is so essential these days.
English, Powerpoint, word processors, spreadsheets, email etiquette, typing etc. are basic requirements for most graduates. The universities are not responsible for teaching the undergraduates about these, but the undergraduates should be made aware and to take the initiative to improve themselves.
Badawi has no clue at all
Period.
“Back then I had friends that had never touch a computer before entering university, but I guess the situation has improved a lot these days. However, lots of graduates are still lacking in some basic computering knowledge that is so essential these days.
English, Powerpoint, word processors, spreadsheets, email etiquette, typing etc. are basic requirements for most graduates these days. The universities are not responsible for teaching the undergraduates about these, but the undergraduates should be made aware and to take the initiative to improve themselves.”
Yeah, agreed with you about this one. Half of my class are still bloody clueless about actually using a wireless mouse or putting a line border on their pictures in Powerpoints despite spending a major half of their scholarship money on high tech comps like the latest HP tablet laptop. I feel like kicking that person’s head and wondering why the hell are they stupid enough not to learn more about these IT stuff first before even surveying for some high specs laptops.
To be frank, I’m a Sarawakian, and most people tend to look down on Sarawakians as backward people, people still living on trees. If I am so like they said ‘ketinggalan zaman’ when I can easily make animations and presentations on Flash, but they, the so-called ‘pengikut zaman’ don’t even know how to retrieve their files back from the Recycle Bin?
Some youngsters these days are doing their best to be trendy (or pretend to be) and sometimes neglecting the important things within… the knowledge and character.
I am not sure if most people tend to look down on Sarawakians… to be honest I didn’t know much about people from Borneo until I know some East Malaysians from university. I think most West Malaysians don’t look down on Sarawakians (or Sabahan), just that we didn’t have much chances to know each other… it’s more like curiousity rather than any discriminative intentions.
On the other hand… when I started university, I had a feeling that East Malaysians held a bit hostility against West Malaysians… but after we knew each other, we are very much the same after all.
It’s the lack of interaction that caused these… hopefully with better communication (like internet) these days, the ‘culture gap’ could be reduced significantly.
[...] I have written a post in August regarding the problems in our local universities; read it if interested. [...]