Hypocrisy at its best

On political values, top 3 things those surveyed want: more democratic country, world class education, reduce income gap – A recent tweet by @TheNutGraph

Just as I was blabbing to a friend of mine a few weeks ago, TNG tweeted something that’s somewhat exactly the thing we were talking about. I suppose TNG was quoting a Merdeka Canter survey.

You want a more democratic country? You blame the government for not being democratic, not listening to you, or when you say something they just put them in the spam bin. You’re doing the same thing! Whatever the government says, you treat them as a lie if they’re not in your favour. Today you quote the EC as if they’re the most honest people in the world, and tomorrow you call them liars.

You want a world class education? With the persistence of the MLM crusaders, you jumped at the slightest news about local universities. You can’t even imagine sending your kids to local universities because you think they are of lower standards. When your kids come back and they say they want to be a teacher or lecturer, you tell them no. “Lecturers are those who can’t make it in the real industry” you said.

You want smaller income gap? You don’t complain when you get that multi-million contract from the government (federal/state). “It’s because I work hard” you said. Don’t mention thousands, you don’t even care about giving RM 5 to an orphanage. You claim every single cent which you spent for the non-profit NGO you spend your time for.

Response to Shafie Jameran re: PSD scholarships

Originally posted here.
Karim Raslan’s article in The Star here.

At the risk of sounding, in the words of the brilliant Karim Raslan, ultra-conservative as well as somewhat ungrateful, I’m actually inclined towards reducing, not stopping but reducing, the number of overseas PSD as well as MARA scholarships, gradually of course. I’m all for GLCs to give overseas scholarship though.

Now, the reason why I want them to be reduced is not a financial decision in the aspect of scholarship funding, but rather the Malaysian higher education environment. IMHO, ultimately, we should not be proud if we study overseas, instead, we should be proud if we were a UM graduate, UPM graduate or a USM graduate, just as the Brits are proud with their OxBridge, just as the Americans are proud with their Ivy-leagues and just as the Australians are proud with their G8. Well of course, to be proud of our local universities, they need to be at par with the THES top50, and THAT is exactly what we should be doing. Our local universities and MOHE are working really hard towards that and we should be helping them, not patronising them.

We want future medical students to dream of Taylor’s Medical School instead of RCSI or Johns Hopkins.
We want future engineering students to dream of UPM’s Engineering Faculty instead of MIT or Imperial.
We want future economic students to dream of UM’s Economics Faculty instead of Wharton or Oxford’s Said Bus. School.
This should be our ultimate goal. Not just to flood our economy with foreign-educated workforce.

Having said that, of course we have to maintain a ‘healthy’ mix of foreign-educated as well to bring a different perspective. However, just imagine if our own universities were flooded with foreign students, not just Asians and Africans, but Americans and Europeans as well. Even better, if we’re blessed enough, they would be worrying about brain-drain to Malaysia. How much more perspective do you want then?

And let’s be honest, how many of our friends who are in Nottingham, in Dublin, in Manchester, who are not vocal, not demanding and, to a certain extent, apathetic on Malaysian issues? Blind loyalty is, of course, another issue altogether.

However, I would want to echo Karim’s thought, “It may simply be a better investment if some Malaysians are allowed to pursue higher technical or vocational education”. You won’t get underwater welding skills in universities. If you don’t know yet, you can find out how much underwater welders make and compare that to your starting pay. Even those Bangladeshis/Indonesians doing special types of roof fittings or polycarbonate roofs can get thousands for a week’s work. But then of course, it’s manual labour and it depends on the employee market condition.

So there you go, don’t phase out, just reduce, but maybe not just yet. Get the universities to buck up, and work hard to be at par, if not better than Stanford, Seoul National and Tokyo University. Then reduce the scholarships. Even MARA needs to reduce them. Just ignore PERKASA and focus on entrepreneurship.