I wish to congratulate Universiti Malaya for being able to ’squeeze’ inside the top 200 universities ranking 2009, compiled by the Times Higher Education Supplement-QS World Universities Rankings 2009.

UM is placed at number180 this year, up from 230 last year. UM has been absent from the top 200 list for many years, and the fact that it is able to come back in should be commended.

While a lot more needs to be done, I view this as a good beginning. This is indeed one of the very rare occasions during the past few years that I have seen an improvement in a Malaysian ranking.

Never mind that UM was once among the top universities in the region comparable to the University of Hong Kong (HKU) and the National University of Singapore (NUS).

While the National University of Singapore and University of Hong Kong have consistently been within the top 50, UM has dropped out altogether from the list of the top 200. The NUS and HKU are now at the 30th and 24th position respectively.

I hope politicians will leave the academicians alone and let them run our universities along meritocractic principles. There should not be two sets of standards and two sets of marking systems. There is nothing like fair competition to bring excellence back to our universities.

Take the example of a hemiplegic patient after a stroke. Initially, the patient would have difficulty in getting up and moving about on his own. At this stage, we normally would give him a walker to support himself and let him move about slowly his own.

After some time, when he is much stronger, he should be weaned off the walker and crutches can be given to him. With the help of the rlutches , he would slowly regain his walking ability and slowly, with the help of physiotherapy, he can often regains 80% of his mobility and is then weaned off the crutches.

Those stroke patients who refuse to exercise and refused to be weaned off the csutches cannot hope to get the same level of mobility as the group that exercises and is weaned off crutches.

Like stroke patients, help can and should be given to weaker academic students in the form of extra classes, extra tutorials, extra homework. These will help the weaker students to reach the level of the better students, but once there, they must be encouraged to compete with them fairly on an equal footing.

Only in this way can they become competent graduates in their chosen fields. What is the point of giving them good marks when at the end of the day, they cannot even perform up to the minimal standard required in their chosen fields?

I think the ‘crutch syndrome’ is the Achilles heel of the country. If this ‘crutch mentality’ is not dismantled through the dismantling of the skewed NEP and all the skewed policies under the programme, then it is difficult to bring back excellence in all our fields..