by Elizabeth Zachariah
The Malaysian Insider
October 03, 2013

Although Putrajaya continues to spend billions on education, Malaysian universities are not benefitting from it. If it’s any indication, for the third year running Malaysian universities have failed to feature in the latest Times Higher Education World University Rankings.

Meanwhile, universities in Thailand and Singapore continue to track higher as shown in the 2013-14 Times survey.

Last year alone Putrajaya allocated RM38.7 billion in its budget for education, with emphasis on improving quality and standards.

One of Putrajaya’s goals is also to make Malaysia an education hub for the region and attract some 200,000 students to local universities by 2020.

But these latest rankings show that for all the money spent and all of Putrajaya’s efforts, Malaysia’s institutions of higher learning are falling behind. Read the rest of this entry »

by Dr. Lim Teck Ghee
CPI
Saturday, 27 July 2013

Commentary

As soon as one academic government yes-man appears to retire from the public scene, another all too quickly rushes to fill the vacancy. The latest academic political wannabe is Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia’s Prof. Teo Kok Seong who has said that the course would benefit the Chinese, and that Chinese leaders should support its introduction.

Offering little in the way of empirical evidence or intellectual argument, he has provided the breathtakingly brilliant and original insight that “TITAS in private higher institution is to resolve the issue faced by citizens who do not know our history and civilisation. The ultimate purpose is to create better understanding, foster unity and inculcate the development of a national identity.”

According to Prof. Teo as reported in Utusan Malaysia (23 July 2013), the compulsory teaching of the subject is to streamline the social sciences in public and private universities and to foster humanism in the undergrads.

And to drive home the importance of the compulsory subject, he links his defence of it to the lack of understanding among private school students “of the country’s history and the basics in the country as [seen in] the sex couple Alvin Tan and Vivian Lee….”, said a Malaysiakini report headlined ‘ Titas would benefit the Chinese, says don’ (July 23).

Prof. Teo appears bent on justifying his position as Research Fellow of the Institute of the Malay World and Civilization and the conferment of a Datukship on him.

If that is his intention, he should have gone further and asked perhaps for the public flogging of the couple and the withdrawal of citizenship of those against the Ministry of Education’s effort to create better understanding and greater unity among students. An even harder line would endear him more to the higher ups and secure greater official recognition. Read the rest of this entry »

At last, the cat is out of the bag – that the university “meritocracy” student intake system which replaced the ethnic quota system for entry into the public universities in 2002 is “more quota than quota”.

According to the MCA Youth leader, Datuk Dr. Wee Ka Siong, the intake of Chinese students for eight major courses in public universities – medical, dentistry, pharmacy, electronics and electrical engineering, chemical engineering, law and accounting – has been declining in recent years from 26.2% in 2001 to 25.3% in 2001 and 20.7 per cent this year.

I commend Wee for finally making the public admission that the so-called “merit system” which replaced the quota system in 2002 was an even worse form of quota system in reality, resulting in the dropping of Chinese students to 19 per cent from more than 30 per cent in the early years, and the general drop in non-Malay students in the eight critical courses in public universities.

In May 2002, I had sent an urgent email to all Cabinet Ministers asking them to rectify the injustice of the so-called “merit-based” university selection system, as the formula used to match the matriculation results and STPM grades was “unprofessional, unfair and gives meritocracy a bad name as it is without any professional merit”, like comparing an apple with an orange.

I had argued at the time that it was quite absurd to compare the results of the STPM and matriculation courses as they are completely different systems, with different kind of evaluation procedures. Read the rest of this entry »

By Tunku Abidin Muhriz | JULY 19, 2013
The Malay Mail Online

It’s not just me: students who I meet at innumerable forums tell me that their history textbooks (and the inane methods of learning) are more likely to induce catatonia than an appreciation of our past; retired soldiers who I meet at war memorials and regimental dinners forlornly remark that important battles of a generation ago are completely forgotten; and retired bureaucrats, senior judges and politicians of the “old school” I have the pleasure to know are resigned to the fact that their heroes — King Ghaz, Tun Suffian, Dr Mohamed Said — will never be household names again.

As for those names which every Malaysian does know, it can be argued that they are simply put on pedestals without sufficient appreciation of their life stories. Ironically, there are many excellent biographies, autobiographies and collections of the writings of our early patriots (the books of Tunku Abdul Rahman could constitute a whole course!), but they don’t seem to be used as teaching materials.
Read the rest of this entry »

by Anas Alam Faizli
The Malaysian Insider
Jan 29, 2013

JAN 29 — Education was institutionalised to formalise the process of knowledge acquisition and research in man’s quest for understanding. The earliest universities in the history of mankind, namely Al-Azhar, Bologna, Oxford, Palencia, Cambridge and the University of Naples (world’s first public university, 1224), have one thing in common; they were built by notable early world civilisations as institutions of research, discourse, learning, proliferation of knowledge and documentation. This contrasts largely from the role of universities today as institutions of human capital accreditation, qualification and, most unfortunately, business and profits.

Ibnu Khaldun, father of historiography, sociology and economics, in his work “Prolegomenon” (Muqaddimah), argued that the government would only gain strength and sovereignty through its citizens. This strength can only be sustained by wealth, which can only be acquired through human capital development (education), which in turn can only be achieved by justice and inclusiveness for all. Aristotle too proposed: “Education should be one and the same for all.” A system that discriminates, in our case, based on household economic ability, can and will rile an unhealthy imbalance in the quality of the resulting labour force and society. These form the basis of our argument here.

In America, the individual funds his higher education while many European countries have public-funded institutions of higher learning. The latter is the best for Malaysia. Our societal and economic progression (or digression) does not depend on any one factor, but on the interaction of economic, social and political factors over a long period of time. Let’s first look at some realities that we need to contend with to understand why the Malaysian government should fund higher education. Read the rest of this entry »

By Martin Jalleh

— Izham Ismail
The Malaysian Insider
Jan 15, 2013

15 JAN — Semalam, kita digemparkan oleh sebuah video yang disebarkan di YouTube, memaparkan perjalanan sebuah forum yang diadakan di Universiti Utara Malaysia. Forum tersebut bertajuk “Seiringkah Mahasiswa dan Politik” dan perkara yang mengejutkan adalah tindakan panel forum terbabit, Saudari Sharifah Zohrah Jabeen yang memberi respon kepada pertanyaan pelajar UUM, Bawani dengan cara yang agak keterlaluan.

Berikutan daripada video ini, pelbagai reaksi telah diberikan oleh semua pihak terutamanya para mahasiswa. Majoriti mahasiswa merasakan bahawa perkara seperti ini tidak seharusnya berlaku apatah lagi tujuan forum tersebut diadakan adalah untuk menjadi medium interaksi dalam kalangan mahasiswa dan ahli panel berhubung isu-isu politik. Malah, selaku Presiden Suara Wanita 1 Malaysia, sebuah NGO, tindakan tersebut sememangnya tidak boleh diterima dan secara peribadi, saya masih tercari-cari rasional saudari Sharifah bertindak sedemikian.

Saya tidak mahu mengulas dengan lebih terperinci tentang intipati kenyataan Saudari Sharifah kerana saya percaya, semua sahabat mahasiswa sudahpun menonton video ini dan mendengar dengan jelas “hujah” yang diberikan oleh Saudari Sharifah. Perkara yang ingin saya tekankan adalah berkenaan soal integriti Saudari Sharifah yang saya kira tidak menggambarkan profesionalisme yang sepatutnya, sesuai dengan status beliau selaku seorang Presiden.

Saya percaya dan sentiasa akan percaya, semua orang mempunyai hak untuk menyatakan apa yang dirasai. Segala firasat, teori, pandangan mahupun kritikan sewajarnya diberikan ruang yang adil untuk disalur dan dikongsi. Apatah lagi, dengan adanya forum sebegini, soalan-soalan “panas” memang merupakan sesuatu yang pasti dan atas sebab itulah, ahli panel perlu bijak menangani.

Selaku mahasiswa, kami sentiasa mempunyai aspirasi yang tersendiri. Biarpun kami mungkin berbeza ideologi sesama sendiri, bernaung di bawah berlainan panji, waima menjadi ahli fikir neutralisasi, ada perkara yang kami kongsi merentas seluruh universiti. Kami berkongsi bahawa hak mahasiswa itu perlu dibela, suara mahasiswa itu perlu dijaga, malah hati, maruah dan pendirian mahasiswa itu perlu diutama. Atas dasar inilah, pelbagai forum atau debat dilaksanakan di peringkat universiti agar medium ini diangkat sebagai saluran idea mahasiswa sekaligus menjunjung semangat demokrasi.

Namun, sayangnya hal ini seolah-olah tidak difahami oleh Saudari Sharifah. Read the rest of this entry »