Kevin Tan's 'Campus politics - more than a proxy war' (Nov 29) oversimplifies matters. It might help if we look across the causeway at Singapore. The two premier universities there - National University of Singapore and Nanyang Technological University - have concentrated on building up excellence in academic rankings to a point where they are consistently rated among the best universities in the Asia-Pacific region (a ranking which none of the Malaysian universities have yet to achieve).

Student politics in NUS and NTU is practically non-existent. Students go there to learn, graduate with a good degree and join the Singapore rat race. It doesn't seem to have hurt the reputations of NUS and NTU any that they both have essentially passive student bodies.

And I would venture to say that the 'quality' of their graduates is way above the products of the Malaysian universities with their often abysmal command of the English language and their strange notions of politics.

Throughout the best universities in the world - the Oxfords, Cambridges, Harvards, Stanfords and Yales - we are seeing a return to basics, namely the pursuit of a good education and a good degree, with an emphasis on academic rigour and excellence.

Only in Malaysia do we bother ourselves as to why our undergraduate population is either politically passive or politically radicalised. I would have thought that we would have much more important things to worry about - such as the slippage of Malaysia's rankings in international ratings of competitiveness and transparency. But no one, the mainstream media, let alone malaysiakini, seems to bother about these areas.