Varsity: A smooth ride down, down, down!

Deepavali is over. Hari Raya had passed almost one month. The next festival for celebration will be Christmas, which is one and a half month away.

Each year passed by with a few blinks of the eyes. Time flies and is gone forever. At each passing day we will have to ponder what we had achieved in life, and what had happened to our lives. Have we become better? Have we made the world a better place to live in? Have we provided the foundations of education for our children such that they will become an asset to society and thereof be able to provide for themselves?

Many moan, not because we didn't try. Many moan because they couldn't get their children to public universities because more than 400,000 students are vying for 50,000 places available in our public universities.

I won't moan... because there's no difference; there's nothing to cheer or be happy about whether my children goes to university or not. This is because each year we had more than 50% of the graduates struggling to find jobs with their degree. The corporate sectors are suffering from nausea; they just can't get "good" graduates. By 'good', we meant those who have the basic requisite knowledge of the science of management and a good background of management theories where they then apply to their works, and derive deliverables. So, the term "unemployable graduates" were coined; many are not unemployed, they are unemployable. They can't communicate, they can speak proper English, they can't design, they can't even write simple letters. They can only do daily office administrative cores like delivering mails or sending documents, sorting and filing documents, drive their colleagues to work or meetings.

Do we blame them? No! I won't blame them. They were victims of circumstances. The educational system developed them to be what they are. They remembered Confucius saying, "We reap what we sow", "for we sow, thus we reap". We now reap what we had sowed. Mahathir started the educational evolution downtrend. He changed Science and Mathematics to Bahasa Malaysia and downgraded the English syllabus. English literature was abolished in school lessons. All subjects except for the subject of English was converted to Bahasa Malaysia. This was done in the name of patriotism and nationalism. By the time Mahathir decides to retire, he regretted that. But it was too late. Now, we reap the fruits of that labor.

Now, Khairy, the Prime Minister's Son-in-Law, is telling the government it is no shame to go back to the basics (science and mathematics be taught in Bahasa Malaysia) as English has proven to be a barrier for the pupils to acquire knowledge.

What a profound statement! An Oxfordian, a man who graduated from an Ivy league university who prided himself of such, declares that English has proven to be a barrier to acquire knowledge. I leave you to ponder over this profound statement.

So, is it surprising that the THES World Universities Ranking results are published? Last year (2006), UKM ranked 185th. It was an improvement from 289th in 2005. They were so happy that they had move up to the Top 200. This year (2007), UKM is ranked 309th. UKM is now not even in the Top 300. What had happened? What had made them such?

University Malaya was ranked among the Top 100 in 2004. In 2005, they ranked 169th but MU prided itself over being listed among the top 100 in three of the five academic categories. MU then erected billboards, buntings and banners to mark its ranking. Despite being listed among the top 100 in Arts and Humanities, Biomedicine and Social Sciences, UM’s overall ranking in a survey published by The Times Higher Education Supplement fell from the 89th to the 169th position. Lim Kit Siang said the banners should be taken down immediately as they were “a clear case of misguided waste of money.” MU had launched the next phase of its “campaign of self-jubilation” by distributing leaflets with an article by vice-chancellor Prof Datuk Dr Hashim Yaacob highlighting the university’s success.

Then in 2006, MU was ranked 192nd. dropping 23 position. Well, the minister said they are still within top 200. And now inn 2007, MU achieved 246th. position, surpassed by 54 other lower ranking universities. USM falls from 277th to 307th.

Do we have a good reason for the poor performance? Yes, always YES! UKM and MU vice-chancellors attributed their fall to the methodology used to calculate ranking. "Even NUS has dropped to 33rd spot when it was within top 10," they said. "Smaller Countries like Malaysia are bound to lose out as THES has introduced new criteria which is peer review," they blamed. Is it true or justified? Hong Kong is a small country. Singapore is a fraction of Johor state. Taiwan is even smaller. Is small the reason? Our leaders like to believe so. We find reasons to justify so as to satisfy. We can do no wrong. It's others, it's not our fault. We are always blameless. The crime rate in Johor Bahru rises; we blame the Singaporean gangsters. Nurin's death, we blame the parents for being negligent. Lingham's scandalous video, we blame the opposition. PKFZ fiasco we blame Jafza, Malay poverty, they blame the Chinese businessmen, Police corruption and organized crime, they blame internal conspiracy within the police force. We will blame everything or anything except ourselves.

Pak Lah said at the UMNO general assembly:

"We have received international acknowledgment for our success..."

We have put one Malaysian in space, and we are going to sent him to the Moon soon. In fact, Malaysia's National Space Agency and the Minister Jamaluddin Jarjis is planning for the mission to Mars and buying the Soyuz rocket costing more than US$65 million for display to attract tourist and tell them about our achievement. Our Cosmonaut-space participant, Muszaphar concurred with Jamaluddin on the purchase of the rocket.

UKM Professor Shamsul Amri shared his concern of the current alarming issues such as inter-religious harmony, the rising crime rate, inflation, rising oil prices, which he rightly state as the bread and butter concerns and needed special urgencies. "For the man in the street these worries have over the past years created feelings of uncertainty."

UMNO Youth Azimi Daim said while most voters knew about the issues, the tougher fight was in convincing them of the government's determination to resolve their worries.

I agree with Azimi. How to convince ordinary Malaysians that there is affirmative actions to resolve these worries when, each passing day, we hear of abuses, corruptors and gangsters being incarcerated, billions of dollars poured into failed projects, sending a passenger to the international space but claiming to be the pilot of the rocket and further claiming to have done scientific experiment with kuih and ketupat and playing tops in zero-gravity, and what was actually achieved and paraded is a Malaysian flag with a signature was endorsed by the cosmonauts at the space station - that's what was achieved!

According to Pak Lah, "The presumption that the Iskandar Development Region will harm Malays is an insult to the ability of Malays to compete on the global stage.

I agree Mr Prime Minister. But the other presumptions are also analogous to your assumed presumption. The presumption that NEP has still not achieve it's target of 30% was fictitious and a ploy. The presumption that the NEP has to create a group of Malays to be in the top 10 of the world riches listing is a fallacy. The presumption that we can manufacture an Apex University with the current academic administrators are fallacious and a malaprop. The universities' standards of education is driving smoothly and rapidly downhill - that's a reality! Another reality - UMNO has become the most corrupt organization - that's a hypothesis to be confirmed in a survey.