I refer to Mansor Puteh's bizarre article Does Malaysia respect its Ivy Leaguers?

The writer (who keeps reminding us endlessly of his elite Ivy League degree) implies - repeatedly and erroneously - that only Ivy League and Oxbridge graduates have an elite education and that graduates of the Ivy League or Oxbridge should not be lumped together with those who attended other universities.

He even lists the eight Ivy League schools as a guide to whom should be considered educationally superior to all others. He states that only those graduates should receive preferential treatment in Malaysia.

Anyone at all familiar with US institutions knows that many other universities and colleges are considered equal to - and in some cases higher-ranked than - most of the Ivies. Need I remind Mansor of MIT, the University of Chicago, Northwestern University, Stanford, and Johns Hopkins?

This is not to mention the very elite liberal arts colleges such as Swarthmore, Haverford and Vassar, among many others. And the venerable guidebook Barron's Profiles of American Colleges lists about 68 institutions that are on a par with the Ivy League colleges in terms of admissions difficulty (how hard it is to get accepted).

But Mansor is not finished. He clearly implies that only Ivy League film schools are worthwhile! Surely, he must know that the three most prestigious film schools in America are UCLA, The University of Southern California, and New York University.

Everyone who is serious and ambitious about studying film applies to those schools (not that others are not worthwhile, but these three are the golden rings).

Oh, and by the way - Steven Spielberg was rejected by the University of Southern California and attended San Diego State instead. Under Mansor's misguided elitist mentality, Spielberg would never have made a film after that, not even in Malaysia.