Yap Mun Ching
The Sun
23 June 2011

AFTER many years of opaque silence, the debate over tertiary education scholarships has finally boiled over with public demands for the list of renegade Public Services Department Scholarship (PSD) holders to be published and at least one father threatening to sue a corporate foundation for not giving his son a scholarship to Cambridge. It is a timely debate and one that stands at the heart of the transparency and accountability pledge of the government.

To find our way out of this mess, a useful starting point is the criteria for allocating scholarships which has been veiled under much secrecy. In a letter to the NST, the chairman of the Centre for Public Policy Studies, Tan Sri Ramon Navaratnam, stated the criteria as follows: academic achievement (20%), racial composition (60%), East Malaysia bumiputra (10%) and socially disadvantaged (10%).

If this is accurate, we can trace many of the controversies over allocation of scholarship funds to this set of guidelines. If only 20% of the national scholarship budget is used to award meritocracy; it is not surprising then that the majority of scholars that we turn out are of mediocre achievement. If only 10% is allocated to support poor students; no wonder movements like Hindraf strike a chord. It is uncertain if the bulk of the 70% of racial allocation is made with any secondary criteria (e.g. meritocratic and means-tested) as well, but it is galling for this writer to recall the PSD and GLC scholarship holders who had sufficient means to purchase vehicles and designer goods throughout their study abroad.

Setting the criteria right is the first step that the administration has to take. If the 1Malaysia pledge is to mean anything, the criteria for awarding public scholarships should also reflect its principles. Scholarships should be provided to those who earn it and those who need it. If the government is concerned about assisting poor bumiputra students, this objective can be achieved by fine-tuning means-tested requirements, rather than using broad racial categorisations.

To ensure that a cross section of deserving students receive scholarships, it is also necessary to clarify what qualifies someone to be a top scorer. Does it mean getting straight As or should students also demonstrate other qualities such as community leadership and sporting excellence? Taxpayers should certainly not be required to foot a ballooning bill of generous promises without transparent and effective management of scholarship funds.

To better manage expectations, clear distinctions have to be made between the right to education and the right to scholarships. There cannot be a limit to a person’s right to seek the best education anywhere he wishes, but this should not automatically imply he has the right to public funds to support these aspirations. To receive a scholarship is a privilege for those who have done exceptionally well and those who intend to give back to society what they have received from it. When the line is not clearly drawn, parents and students come to assume that denial of a scholarship is a denial of education, which is clearly not the case. It also feeds the problem of “ungrateful” scholarship holders who do not return or repay their scholarship monies.

Unless we have a bottomless pit of funds to support a growing demand for scholarships, some hard decisions must be made and made soon. We cannot stinge on education spending but we can certainly better use it to improve the quality of tertiary education at home so that there is less pressure for students to go abroad. There should also be an end to giving away free money, with all students required to repay part of their scholarship money. To address the problem posed by those who received scholarship to go abroad but do not return, publishing their names in the newspapers would do nothing other than giving an outraged public temporary satisfaction. A more effective solution is simply to enforce repayment of the funds, if not from the students, then from their guarantors.

Mun Ching enjoys travelling off the beaten path to discover the grittier but more revealing parts of the region we call home.