LOCAL UNIVERSITIES ARE ALSO DEGREE MILLS

Degree Mills

University Malaya (MU) Chancellor Sultan Azlan Shah has called on all Malaysian public universities to be bold enough to pursue quality instead of quantity and that our universities should not be degree mills but centres of knowledge dissemination and creativity.

Thus, they should find the optimum limit for physical expansion and retain experienced lecturers who have passed the retirement age, His Majesty added.

His speech was made in conjunction with the MU's convocation ceremony yesterday.

This year’s convocation will see 7,192 graduates receiving their scrolls over the next five days.

COMMENTS:

Recent news reports have highlighted the question of bogus degrees awarded by institutions such as Cambridgeshire and Irish International University (IIU). I did meet up with some graduates from IIU and apparently, I am told that all aspiring students were informed by the institution that IIU is not accredited by Lembaga Akreditasi Negara (LAN) nor by the Malaysian Education Ministry. They also knew that the university is not Irish, but registered in UK. The graduates were in fact happy to accept the distant learning methodology which requires them to attend seminars for 12 subjects and will also have to submit a dissertation or thesis. In fact these graduates seems happy with the quality of lectures provided.

The main issue of discussion is the relevance of accreditation by LAN or Ministry of Education and the acceptance of the degree as the basis of qualification to a vocation.

Crimea University was initially accredited by LAN and the ministry but later de-accredited. Does it mean that those who will graduate from Crimea are "Bogus" graduate? In the same vein, certain degrees from MU, UiTM, UKM and USM are also not recognized by the foreign counterpart. Would it also mean that our degrees are bogus?

The main concern of "Bogus Degrees" are centered on institutions that sells paper qualification without the need of participants having to attend classes, or attend seminars, do assignments and submit dissertations in conformance with international quality standards, or sit for exams. These are basically degree millers and they print paper qualifications for a profit.

Ironically, the ministry fail to see themselves in the same light when they too have a highly questionable system of admitting students for degree courses, and also the way many of the students having graduate without the relevant knowledge. In the end we can observe that we have manufactured graduates who are UNEMPLOYABLE and unwanted by the corporations.

Even the Higher Education Minister Datuk Dr Shafie had recently commented that most of our graduates interviewed by the Public Services Department could not answer questions on general knowledge and this was one of the reasons why they found it difficult to get accepted into government service.

“What is sad is that they do not know basic things like the name of ministers. Maybe they do not even know who the Higher Education Minister is,” Dr Shafie said.

I interviewed a PhD graduate from University Sains Malaysia (USM) and this is what he said:

"Enrolment to public universities are too loose and not transparent. Seems like every form sixers are able to enter public university as long as they are not "choosy". In addition, the enrolling benchmark is not clear. The standard for STPM and matriculation is definitely different and not of the same standards but both have equal chance to get into our public universities. You can see that the education ministry will always change the marking system or even the grading system (previously, those who excels in co-curriculum activities gets a better chance to be admitted to university but today, there is no such thing). It did confuse us, for examples, when I sat for my STPM, we are given grade A, B, C, D and E but nowaday it becomes A+, A, B+ or ..... I am not saying this is bad but at least it must have a reason. We need to emphasize the quality of the graduate but not the quantity."

Marina Mahathir was more incendiary. This is what she said:

"I went to a seminar hoping to listen to more interesting viewpoints. In a panel where university lecturers spoke and students asked questions and ventured opinions, I was struck by how some supposedly highly-qualified academicians had the same inability to provide a rational analysis of real situations and instead resorted to vague generalisations and illogic. Unsurprisingly the students were no better, asking unoriginal questions and spouting well-worn phrases that elicited applause from their own crowd. Not a single student asked any questions which were at all provocative or revealed some real thinking. I suppose we should not blame our students’ lack of thinking skills when people who don’t have them either are teaching them."

The hypothesis is that Malaysian Public Universites are equally degree millers and in reality, many of the graduates are rolled out from the mills with an ACCREDITED piece of paper, but with moronic mentality and are classified as illiterates. And don't just blame the students, says Marina; the standards of the lecturers are no better. WE had produced these lecturers too!!!!