Presuming that the treasury chest of the Jabatan Perkhidmatan Awam is not bottomless whereas demands made on its funds are stretched, then perhaps JPA – the department which handles national programmes to develop public sector human resources – may want to reconsider shifting its emphasis from heavy sponsorship on matriculation and first degrees for 18-year-olds (which raises the inevitable annual brouhaha) to investing or diverting more money to such programmes that it already has, for example, sponsoring Master and professional courses as well as career development.

Perhaps the lack of media coverage, or conversely over- sensationalism on the SPM top scorers, has obscured what the public knows (which is very little) of JPA's work.

While an inordinate focus has been given to privileged youngsters, it does seem on the other hand that other important potentialities have been neglected, or if non-existent then need to be explored .

Joe Public perceives the Jabatan Perkhidmatan Awam scholarships to be awarded to the children of cronies and those well connected. If for donkey and dodo years we've been unable to level the opaque playing field, then perhaps we should now look at how to move the venue of the game instead.

chua soi lek pc 190509 01 MCA deputy president Dr Chua Soi Lek ( left ) last week posted in his blog: “We are one of the few countries that award scholarship at the SPM level, 'O-level', to pursue university education. Most countries is based on the A-level exam.”

To enter Oxford University, for instance, three A-levels are needed aside from other requirements specific to the course. In its 2008 intake, 98.2 percent of successful Oxford admission boasted A-A-A whereas 1.6 percent obtained A-A-B. That's British-style straight As excellence for you.

Therefore, why not we allocate the JPA scholarships to STPM and not SPM top scorers?

Malaysia is demographically a young country. Our 27 million population comprises roughly 73 percent under the age of 40. In fact, it was estimated that 32.4 percent or one-third in the year 2006 were under the age of 15. According to the Yearbook published last year by the Department of Statistics, there are five-and-a-half million Malaysian youngsters of school-going age.

In 2008, a total 442,936 students sat the SPM. From this colossal number, there emerged many, many with a string of As. In time to come, there will be even more top scorers and the government cannot possibly be giving an automatic scholarship to every single one of them.

The perennial JPA fiasco involves Fifth Formers but if one were to turn to Sixth Formers, only 53,638 of them sat for STPM last year. Such a drastic reduction in the talent pool makes sifting scholarship applicants based on STPM more manageable.

In truth, the clutch of SPM distinctions is becoming unmanageable and symptomatic of our Malaysia Boleh preoccupation. In high achieving Singapore, students don't take 15 or 20 subjects. Singapore's most recent O-level top scorer is a Malaysian girl from Subang Jaya who netted 10A1s.

Whereas in Bolehland, Azali Azlan from a religious school in Kedah scored 21As in 2007. In what way does his superhuman SPM feat reflect on our education scene overall? Would an impartial foreign observer be more impressed with 10As Singapore whose universities rank high internationally, or with 20As Malaysia?

Managing our human resource

The JPA scholarship is issued by the Public Services Department. It's public money to be used for public good. So who says JPA largesse must only benefit 18-year-olds?

A 14As or 15As candidate deserves more favourable weightage, argued Lim Kit Siang, Tony Pua and Anthony Loke at a forum Tuesday night. I disagree with them.

I believe the JPA scholarship selection criterion benchmarking 9As as the cap (i.e. its selection mechanics do not confer any additional advantage for exam results of 10As or more), is indeed sensible.

Why this Malaysian obsession with 'biggest', 'tallest' and 'most-est'?

SPM is our own self-arbitration yardstick for 17-year-olds. Yet my nine-year-old niece would be able to breeze through its English paper. The Malaysian middle-class ethos of back-to-back tuition classes, spotting questions, doing stacks of past year papers and prepping sample answers begs the consideration – are we intent on passing exams or on acquiring knowledge?

Another way out of the current impasse is to divert this constantly disputed JPA financial assistance to individuals in their mid-to-late 20s and above who are engaged in critical sectors, such as teachers, lecturers, and technical or vocational trainers.

Or else channel it to those who have already been in the public service at least five years. Hence civil servants around the age of 30 can be sponsored to do a Master in their discipline, for example, a district officer who makes his tour of duty in the hinterland ought to be given priority.

university convocation 090507 03 And why confine the scholarship to matriculation and first degree seekers? Why the less than stringent enforcement of the scholarship terms and conditions, meaning recipient has to return a service to the country.

Ask also who really renders 'public service'? It's our uniformed personnel like firemen and rangers. Send these guys, those who are in their 20s, for courses abroad to learn the most advanced technology and modern methods related to their field of work.

Despatch our police officers to renowned police academies overseas to upgrade their skills and expertise. JPA scholarships – we could perhaps rebrand them as 'JPA awards' or some other name – can be made the incentive for our young policemen to aspire to a higher level of professionalism and thus burnish the image of the force.

Alternatively, let JPA help graduands of local universities to pursue post-graduate degrees. The three or four-year period of undergraduate study would winnow out those lacking academic rigour and stamina. This sourcing is a better gauge than our present single-minded fixation on 17-year-olds that ace an exam which critics claim to be largely a test of rote learning and regurgitation.

Dr Chua wrote that for more than 13 years, he was a board member of the Johor Education Foundation and every year, he would, with other officials, go around to interview scholarship applicants. “I must admit that I am appalled by the lack of common knowledge and interest by a lot of our students in universities with excellent results.”

He added that “Simple questions like ‘why are you pursuing your chosen course’ often elicit no response”. His conclusion: “We have a lot of bookworms.”

The bigger concern

Malaysia must be the only country in the world where the flood of tears shed by disillusioned boys and girls from minority communities is a national scandal that recurs annually. What this country is teaching its young is not to expect justice from the world. It crushes the spirit to be handed the bitter life lesson that diligent effort will not reap commensurate reward.

Little Napoleons in the JPA may to refuse to give our best brains a fair shake but ultimately whose loss is it? The world is their oyster as JPA is not the sole provider of scholarships. Many other entities were falling over themselves to sponsor 21A Azali (though not a JPA victim), or earlier, the Math prodigy Sufiah Yusof (who incidentally is not Malaysian!)

jabatan perkhidmatan awam jpa public service department psa Therefore, if nothing else, it is imperative for the present crop of heart-wrenched teenagers to open their eyes to other paths. Former minister Goh Cheng Teik tells this anecdote: Even though he was head prefect of Penang's St Xavier's Institution, he was rejected by the government for a scholarship to do medicine in Universiti Malaya. But when a door shuts, a window opens and Goh fortuitously went on to Harvard.

The JPA debacle accentuates the scramble to study abroad, with 2,000 overseas scholarships available and 800 disappointed candidates appealing against their rejection.

While the media limelight focusses on this perennial deluge of hundreds disappointed, there is still the unresolved dilemma of Malaysia's thousands upon thousands of graduates who are not doing what their paper qualification states they are accredited to do. Just the other day when I was having lunch at my favourite Makcik stall, I was approached by a UiTM alumnus who graduated two years ago trying to sell me educational jigsaw puzzles.

UiTM is the biggest university in Malaysia with an enrolment of some 95,000. Older degree mills like UPM, UTM, UM, USM and UKM have between 25,000 and 30,000 each. Combined, they and other younger public universities and polytechnics make up a student population of at least a million. And don't forget, Malaysia has a high birthrate.

It is the standard of our domestic tertiary education catering to the majority that we must shine the spotlight on. To say there is room for improvement is an understatement. It is this large untended backyard, not the crème de la crème, that should be our main worry.

The Malay version of this article appears here . The writer made her debut in Malay writing with this article .