I don't agree with Meng that it's "our" fascination with bigness, elegance and style over the last 20 years to impress the West is the reason for the decline in quality of graduates from Universiti Malaya (UM) and Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM). I don't think any thinking Malaysian, including myself, are impressed by these grandiose things.

Meng mentioned that the quality of graduates from UM and USM were world class in the 60s and 70s.

Well, the crackdown of student protestors over the starving Baling peasants and eviction of the Tasik Utara squatters happened in 1974, followed by the introduction of the Universities and University Colleges Act barring students from political participation.

In the 1980s, a friend studying at one of the local universities said they were given all sorts of meaningless assignments to keep them very busy, leaving them no time to think about anything else.

Then you might recall that the government reduced the duration of engineering courses from four to three years, supposedly to ease the shortage of engineers but several employers have told me that the quality of local engineering graduates is poor and one of my friends who's an alumnus

of USM tells me graduates from there which he interviews are below his expectation.

I posed this question to him on a discussion list: "Has the reduction of the duration of university courses (perhaps only engineering courses) from four to three years had an impact on the quality of our graduates?"

To which he replied: "Absolutely yes. Even when I went back to my alma mater and took a look at the current and immediate past crop of graduates, they lacked the skills and general knowledge about computer science theories and principles which are needed. as a result, while we may churn out people who understand specific programming environments like Java, .NET or ASP, we don't really have anyone who understands the why of what they do.

"As a result, we breed a generation of doers and not thinkers. This artificial stifling of the creative process drives drones, which are quite evident in our current SSO, or outsourcing push. The price is we'll get further behind in the technological arms race."

I further asked: "I interviewed the head of an IT company last year and he told me that this reduction has resulted in lower quality engineering graduates."

To which he replied: "By and large, we lack the thinking workforce and without these problem solving skills, companies will turn to imports or relocation to meet their needs. This is inevitable."

So due to government policy, the situation is in a mess and graduates are suffering and the government is resorting to band-aid measures like retraining (in goodness knows what) to supposedly help them become employable and while we can all quote splendid words of wisdom and morality but I'm afraid will only fall on the deaf ears of politicians or government officials who feel it maintains their position to keep students docile and ignorant and no amount of well-meaning, sensible urging will persuade them to change.

Thus it's, "Thou shalt think within our box and woe betide those who dare to think outside it."

So, the proverbial chickens have come home to roost. Think not! Ask not! Memorise plenty!