COMMENT | End unhealthy obsession with research papers, degrees
COMMENT | Referring to the recent article 'Publish or perish' mentality driving academicians to questionable journals by Martin Vengadesan, we might be scratching only the tip of the iceberg.
It is also known that most of these journals are not replicable and some of them are manipulated.
Would these published journals with extremely flawed and unusable results help in moving our research and development to the next level? Definitely not. If this situation is left unchecked, we will be experiencing a large waste of resources and this could severely cripple the reputations of our institutes.
Unfortunately, we also have bigger issues that come along with the publishing of questionable journals. From another Malaysiakini letter by YS Chan titled Holistic education trumps paper qualification, the opinions stated there are valid.
We have a lot of universities and colleges being established here but yet we are still struggling with youth unemployment and underemployment year after year. Why are we paying a lot of money for higher education just to end up without a proper job? Have we missed out on something essential for our graduates to be gainfully employed?
Employers lament about the majority of our graduates’ appalling command of the English language and their lacking of technical skills.
These skills are absolutely required for the survival of the workforce nowadays. Ideally, we thought that these higher education institutes would have sufficiently imparted these skills to the students before they attended their graduation ceremony.
But now we are searching high and low for quality graduates in the nation only to realise that this is almost a futile effort by employers.
When graduates fail to be employed, this leads to also another major problem that is plaguing this country ...
COMMENT | Referring to the recent article 'Publish or perish' mentality driving academicians to questionable journals by Martin Vengadesan, we might be scratching only the tip of the iceberg.
It is also known that most of these journals are not replicable and some of them are manipulated.
Would these published journals with extremely flawed and unusable results help in moving our research and development to the next level? Definitely not. If this situation is left unchecked, we will be experiencing a large waste of resources and this could severely cripple the reputations of our institutes.
Unfortunately, we also have bigger issues that come along with the publishing of questionable journals. From another Malaysiakini letter by YS Chan titled Holistic education trumps paper qualification, the opinions stated there are valid.
We have a lot of universities and colleges being established here but yet we are still struggling with youth unemployment and underemployment year after year. Why are we paying a lot of money for higher education just to end up without a proper job? Have we missed out on something essential for our graduates to be gainfully employed?
Employers lament about the majority of our graduates’ appalling command of the English language and their lacking of technical skills.
These skills are absolutely required for the survival of the workforce nowadays. Ideally, we thought that these higher education institutes would have sufficiently imparted these skills to the students before they attended their graduation ceremony.
But now we are searching high and low for quality graduates in the nation only to realise that this is almost a futile effort by employers.
When graduates fail to be employed, this leads to also another major problem that is plaguing this country - defaulting of student loans. If they are employed, these graduates might have to end up working in jobs that were not in their fields of study, or worse, low-paying jobs that do not require a degree.
To add salt to injury, the high cost of living and stagnant wages have also prevented them from effectively servicing their loans. Besides that, we all know that unemployment is a social problem and it can result in an increased crime rate if not addressed.
If the chances of getting a good employment are extremely slim in this millennium, why are we still obsessed over going to college or university? Nowadays, the value of the degree has already been drastically lowered but we still have to pay top dollar for it.
What is the point of getting a degree and being unemployed in the end? Shouldn't it be a ticket to getting employed in the first place?
Due to excessive privatisation and political interference in higher education institutes here, admission requirements are lowered so that more will have a chance of getting a degree despite having mediocre or poor results in their foundational exams.
Our hapless youths are being pushed to get a degree no matter if they had failed all their subjects in their high schools and were threatened (or gaslighted) about no other alternative to a degree.
Overly obsessed
The sad fact is most of us are putting a college or university degree on a pedestal. When we were younger, we are pressured by our parents, relatives and our friends to obtain a degree, even if it is a useless one and does not bring value. We dream about our Kodak moment of the graduation ceremony, sticking the college bumper sticker on our cars and bragging about it to our neighbours.
We want that piece of paper badly so that we can get good jobs, be automatically paid well to buy things that we want (and don't want), and then be expected to retire early. Some of us would take out hefty loans or sell our properties just to secure that dream.
But are we aware of the consequences of unemployment upon graduation or of dropping out from studies? Do we know that not all higher education institutes are built equally? If we are going to an institute that provides substandard quality tuition, it would be worse than not getting a degree at all.
What makes matters worse is course materials offered that are often disconnected from modern industry.
When we get overly obsessed with degrees, we may miss out on developing hard and soft skills that can be useful in our future employment. Not everyone can go down the academic path - more options such as technical and vocational education should be offered to youth who have just completed their high school.
In Germany, about nearly half of the population were holding formal vocational training in 2016. Therefore, Germany has one of the lowest unemployment rates in the European Union. Meanwhile, here, polytechnic and vocational schools are abundant and they come with very low cost fees.
But most Malaysians wouldn't want to go there due to the excessive stigma of being associated with these schools. Unlike most of the knowledge obtained from a degree course nowadays, (hard) skills learnt from these vocational institutes are more likely to be transferrable from workplace to another workplace.
If our youths are not interested in continuing down the academic path, they can join technical or skill-based training, which upon completion, will let them become employed sans the large student loans.
This article is not meant to come down on universities and colleges. These institutes serve a noble purpose in creating our nation's civil engineers, doctors, lawyers, and scientists.
If one is self-aware, matured and understands the benefits of taking higher education, going to a college or university can be the best choice. Otherwise, there are many other alternatives to getting educated so that we will be gainfully employed.
We need to stop being overly pushy about getting a degree without examining our own abilities and limitations. Like said earlier, we need to explore the prospects of technical and vocational education and reintroduce this system to the masses.
No point getting a degree if we are not good in academic matters (or if we are not interested in studies) and we have to spend our time being unemployed or worse, underemployed with student loans at our side.
To wrap this up, we need to end our unhealthy obsessions with publishing research papers and getting university degrees. Our generation must acquire practical and technical skills if they want to build a successful nation, not mountains of unpaid student debts or journals that have no value.
The views expressed here are those of the author/contributor and do not necessarily represent the views of Malaysiakini.
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