Well if there is a day that best portrays how group size means nothing, it’s the day when the government announced the suspension of the Public Services Department (JPA) scholarship and the Education Ministry Bursary. With a non-existent political capital (by design, and not choice), students as a group, although large in size is easily the lowest hanging fruit that is ripe for the taking in order to bail out the government and keep its wallet in check.

Keep in mind that only days ago, the nation caught up with the news that some students in public institutions of higher learning (IPTAs) can’t afford proper nourishment, only to be ridiculed by a few ministers.

Public outcry has to our surprise been met with mixed responses from different quarters, some defending the move. So here’s one to keep your head straight. This article will go through the most pompous line of defence that have surfaced on the timeline today.

This is a direct response to the ‘Aspiring Contrarian’ .

To begin with, look at this guy’s web name, being contrarian might get him off, but let’s not resort to name calling. Here are the reasons why he is vastly wrong:

“Privilege not a right”

While many full-heartedly agree that a scholarship is a privilege and not a right, readers should look at it from a situational perspective. The suspension of the JPA scholarship came right after the government announced a budget revision following the abysmally low oil revenue.

Targeting health care and education is typically the last measure any government would resort to when consolidating its fiscal position, so it’s not surprising that the public is in protest over the suspension seeing that it’s the first cut made in this round of revision.

In fact, this isn’t the first time the government decided to slash something off the education coffer first when they are facing a dead wall! When the 2016 budget was tabled in parliament last year, the government announced a broad and sharp cut to public universities funding. RM1.4 billion was siphoned out of the previous year budget to public universities nationwide. The Education Ministry as a whole suffered RM2.4 billion cut.

To make things worse, the government decided to bump up the Prime Minister’s Office budget by RM1.1 billion more, totalling it to RM20.3 billion!

So yes, while it’s true that scholarship is a privilege, education is a right! The suspension only proves that the government does not care about what it does to social mobility and they definitely do not mind how it affects our talent pool. Worse, we contend that the scholarship program was targeted precisely because the government takes the least hit on its political mileage here.

“Poorly designed policy”

This writer freely admits that in its current form, the JPA scholarship scheme is due for some serious restructuring, beginning from the selection process all the way to the placement of these graduates. And talking about driving nails in this coffin that is the JPA scholarship, let’s go through the list of other coffins that have been waiting to be buried but have been kept on ground to profit the ‘elite’ mourners scavenging on it.

Let’s see, the RM465 million spent on a new jet for the prime minister, the funds on standby to bail certain sovereign funds, or maybe, the RM1 billion annual budget for the Department of Islamic Development Malaysia (Jakim)? The list goes on and on.

“There is absolutely no obligation for governments to use tax revenue on funding the overseas education of selected students”

First, the cut potentially affects both overseas and locally sponsored students. The scheme indeed supports a higher proportion of students at local institutions compared to overseas. And if it isn’t yet obvious, there is certainly an obligation for the government to step in and provide quality education to students who have no means otherwise.

Secondly, by your logic, the government would then have the right to waive themselves from doing almost anything since they are simply “not obliged”. The key here is to manage the very scarce (they like to say it is, even though it really isn’t when it comes to other governmental spendings) resources that they have and allocate it to its proper uses.

The thing about scholarships (overseas especially), is that while there’s no obligation (a bit vague here, does he mean constitutional or moral? hmm) for the government to provide it, it is still arguably in the best interest of any developing nation to do so. Developing talent is a delicate art, it comes in multiple tiers and for us to waste the chance to develop the creme de la creme of our talent pool is a huge mistake.

Without discrediting the local IPTAs, forgoing what could be learnt abroad is akin to the idiom “bodoh sombong”.

Which brings us to the next point,

“JPA scholars who are very impressive and serious human beings... are vastly outnumbered by students who are simply average in achievement and ability... So at the risk of offending many readers, the quality of a large proportion of JPA students barely justifies the money spent on them”

Thanks for offending thousands of brilliant talent who honestly studied for their SPM, diligently strived through their pre-university, to make it into one of the Top 50 universities in the world (yes, JPA sets standards) and graduate to become nation builders in various sectors back home. Besides, personal observation on a high horse reflects nothing of the greater pool of JPA scholars we have all over the world.

“So don’t waste your tears as the coffin gets lowered, with the Requiem playing in the background, it wasn’t much good when it was alive anyway”

Here the writer feels compelled to ask everyone to wake up and realise that painting the entire scholarship scheme using a broad brush to present it as one of the (many) unjustifiable excesses by the government is entirely missing the point!

On the contrary, we should mourn the fact that today we’ve allowed what indeed wasn’t perfect but inarguably good to be freely taken away from us. We have to take a stand and not let the government corner students each and every time a budget review is needed - or more acutely, every time they find that they need to pay for their own grave mistakes.

With all due respect, we disagree with the Aspiring Contrarian, and we urge the government to review this decision for the sake of our future generation, and by extension, the future of our country.