I refer to the bleatings of the vice-chancellor of Universiti of Malaya, claiming that UM has improved despite its drastic slide in the THES' World University Tables ranking.

Somehow, one is reminded of the proclamations of the erstwhile Iraqi Minister of Information, Mohammed 'Baghdad Bob' Saeed al-Sahaf, claiming that American troops are committing suicide en-masse, even as they were actually about to conquer Baghdad.

A quick perusal through the THES table reveals something interesting: the National University of Singapore is sitting at No. 22, sandwiched between the ETH Zurich (the Zurich Federal Institute of Technology, Einstein's alma-mater) and the Australian National University.

It gives food for thought that less than 50 years ago, the NUS was part of the University of Malaya prior to Singaporean independence. It has managed to pull itself up by its bootstraps to put itself among some of the best universities in the world, while the UM continues its tragic decline.

As if this was not bad enough, we hear that there are 60,000 undergraduates in the country who are unemployed due to their lack of marketable skills. Against this backdrop, the VC's excuses seem more and more laughable.

It doesn't matter if the rest of the world (and the region, indeed) is pulling ahead, but so long as we close our eyes and ignore everything elsewhere, we're in fact very good! This is another tragic symptom of Malaysia's obsession with glorifying mediocrity - we conquered Everest and who cares if a 14-year old Nepalese boy managed the feat alone and in less time, and without the full backing of his country at that.

And so the university's upper echelons obsess themselves with finding excuses while the country's reputation and competitiveness burns to the ground with local undergraduates no longer possessing a glimmer of critical and independent thought.

Nope, nothing wrong here at all. Malaysia Boleh.