Early last month, one of my cousins flew into London for an overnight stop before continuing her journey back to Malaysia. As I hadn't seen her for a while, we agreed to meet for dinner, and over the course of dinner, she asked what I do for a living. She was surprised when I told her I'm a software engineer.

"But Farah," she said, "I thought you studied international relations. How come you're not doing something related to that?"

This is a question I frequently face whenever I tell people what I do, and what I studied. But whilst in Britain this question is accompanied by polite interest - it is, after all, normal in Britain for people to study one thing but forge a career in a different field; in my own workplace, there are former physicists and at least one English graduate working as software engineers - in Malaysia this question is usually accompanied by incredulity.

Do something you didn't study for? Why? How come? In Britain, my explanation of how I got where I am today is usually accepted without much question. In Malaysia, I get the inevitable follow-up: so did you do another degree?

Whilst in Britain (and to a large extent, the Western world) a university education is seen as not just specialisation but also a broadening of minds, in Malaysia a university education is merely a stepping stone towards one's career and making money. This is not a good situation, because it means subjects that deserve further study are neglected (when was the last time a Malaysian did a PhD in Malaysian history in a Malaysian university?).

It also means employers will automatically overlook a graduate without a 'desirable' degree. If I wanted to do IT in Malaysia when I graduated, nobody, in all likelihood, would have hired me because I had the 'wrong' degree for the industry. Yet in Britain you could spend three years studying Chaucer and Shakespeare at university and still work in investment banking, whilst back in Malaysia a degree in Kesusasteraan Melayu, it would seem, puts you at the top of the unemployment heap.

There is also, in Malaysia, a snobbish attitude towards certain degrees. The preferred degrees are medicine, engineering, law and accountancy. Social sciences? They're for those who aren't up to studying for the 'proper' subjects. When I was filling out my UPU (Unit Pemprosesan Universiti) forms all those years ago, I was tempted to put down anthropology at UIA (Universiti Islam Antarabangsa) as one of my degree choices. I talked it over with a friend of my brother's who was a UIA student at the time.

"Anthropology? Why would you want to do that? That's what all the matrics students who can't get into law do you know."

This was a viewpoint I was to encounter again and again. Why study anthropology when you can do law? In the event, I went on to study international relations, and yes, I was asked many times why I chose that subject when I had the grades to study law, accountancy, finance or economics. I would usually say: "because it interests me"; I would get the same statement back each time: "well, I suppose you could join the Foreign Ministry and become an ambassador somewhere".

Why study history?

Which brings me to my next point. Malaysians seem to think that studying a degree because the subject matter is of interest a complete waste of time. You go to university to get a job that pays well. Why study history? Historians don't make money, and anyway there aren't many jobs for them. Ditto anthropology, archaeology, geography, languages, music, literature, religious studies and many other subjects. As far as (many) Malaysians are concerned, these subjects are a waste of time, and a waste of money.

So what if we are ignorant of our history, have a complete lack of interest in our geography and environment and allow its exploitation, and lack any interest whatsoever in our literary and cultural heritage (who cares if nobody reads works like Hikayat Malim Dewa and Sejarah Tanah Melayu anymore?)? After all, the only thing that matters is making money, and as for culture, well we've got Akademi Fantasia, haven't we?

Of course, merely having the 'right' degree by no means guarantees a good job. No, you also have to be a graduate of the 'right' university - and not necessarily a local one, either. In recent months, a spate of letters have appeared in a Malay language newspaper complaining that employers are discriminating against graduates from local universities. Why, some of these letters ask, should employers continue giving preference to foreign graduates? After all, our local universities are just as good as foreign ones.

Except of course, this isn't quite true. According to the highly respected index of universities compiled by the Shanghai Jiao Tong University, none of our universities made it into the top 500 worldwide, or the top 100 from the Asia-Pacific region. It is bad enough that our universities have not made it into the list (the rankings are based on factors like academic or research performance by staff, alumni and students, articles published in distinguish journals like Nature and Science and research that is highly cited), what is worse is the claustrophobic control exerted by university officials over the teaching staff.

Earlier this year, Professor Terence Gomez had to resign his post at Universiti Malaya after the latter refused to release him to take up a post at the UN's Research Institute for Social Development. In any other part of the world, an appointment like this is an honour to the institution, but not in Malaysia. If a university would deny its own staff the freedom to carry out his or her work, why should it grant this privilege to its students?

This is a grave mistake, because in a competitive, globalised world, employers want workers with initiative and the wherewithal to think for themselves. An environment that does not encourage freedom of thought will not be able to produce the workers that employers want; it will also not produce the kind of work that would attract the best students and academics. Our universities will never produce Nobel laureates if the staff and students aren't given full support in the pursuit of their academic interests.

Do degrees matter? Even though the likes of Bill Gates and Richard Branson have become extremely successful without degrees, a recent survey of job advertisements in Malaysia's five leading daily newspapers in July found that 19.8 percent of adverts offered jobs to those with a bachelor's degree, so it would seem that the answer to this question is yes. But of course, things are not as clear-cut as they may seem. In Malaysia, it is not just having a degree that matters, but also what and where you studied.

FARAH FAHMY is a consultant working and living in London.