Democratise education, build more universities: forum

comments     Yusof Ghani     Published     Updated

news feature

Educationist Prof Ibrahim Bajunid has a dream to share. He wants to see Malaysians endowed with so much knowledge that it would require a number of citizens from a developed country to match each Malaysian's knowledge.

"For instance, the amount of knowledge that a diplomat from a developed country has today may be equivalent to an average of 30 Malaysians," said Ibrahim at an education forum held at the Selangor Chinese Assembly Hall in Kuala Lumpur recently.

"It is wrong to assume that every person in this world has equal amount of knowledge, because some people are more educated or have greater exposure than others," said Ibrahim, the dean of the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, Universiti Tun Abdul Razak in Selangor.

He said to rectify the imbalance, education has to be made available to everyone, regardless of age or ethnic background. "What we need is to democratise our education."

Nevertheless, Ibrahim believed that such a process will take time as it has only begun. "The democratisation of education in Malaysia has a long way to go."

Perhaps the current controversy, following the implementation of the merit-based intake into public universities, speaks for the state of higher education in Malaysia.

Despite boasting of a state-of-the-art airport, the finest Formula One race track, and the world's tallest buildings, to name a few, the Malaysian government can only admit 32,752 students who have completed 12 or 13 years of education into its 17 public universities this year.

This is way below the number of 47,559 qualified applicants, who are armed with no less than the Sijil Tinggi Persekolahan Malaysia (STPM) or equivalent qualifications. In other words, the potentials of the other 14,807 Malaysians, who should have the chance of getting a degree after spending 13 years in government-sponsored schools, will not be realised via university education.

A seasoned educationist, Ibrahim understands the emotions and feelings of these thousands of students when their hopes to enter the universities were dashed.

"But I think it is okay if one does not enter the university immediately after leaving school," said Ibrahim, a point which may not go down well with many.

"I believe that some people may perform better at university level after gaining a few years of work experience. This is because they [become more mature] after being in the work force for a while."

Life-long education

Nevertheless, he said this requires a greater commitment from the government, by providing facilities for this group. "What the government should do is to provide a life-long education for all," stressed Ibrahim.

"So far, this is already happening here, although very much at the initial stage. However, this is not an uncommon practice in developed countries."

Speaking at the same forum, DAP vice-chairperson Dr Tan Seng Giaw stressed that there is an urgent need for the government to increase the number of public universities.

He said Australia, a country which has about the same population as Malaysia, currently has 45 universities.

"We have about half-a-million students pursuing higher education at public and private universities here, of which about 290,000 are in public universities," said Tan.

However, he claimed that the figure is way too small, as Malaysia should have at least one million students in the universities now if the government is seriously thinking about developing human resources in achieving a developed country status. "We are still way behind."

Tan said the lack of highly educated people has resulted in insufficient locals to run Malaysia's two technology parks located at Kuala Lumpur's Bukit Jalil and Kulim, Kedah.

"In order to be a developed country, Malaysia should have at least one technology park in each of its 13 states," Tan continued.

Thus, said Tan the government should work harder towards having at least 35 public universities by 2020, when Malaysia hopes to achieve a developed country status.

Earlier this month, DAP also challenged the government to increase this year's university intake by another 12,000 in order not to waste the potential human resource which would serve as Malaysia's most important asset in preparation for globalisation.

Lower intake

Meritocracy issue aside, the opposition party also wonders why the government has allocated fewer seats in the public universities this year, since this is not in line with the government's policy to increase intake by eight percent a year under the Eighth Malaysia Plan.

"Instead, the government is decreasing this year's intake by 16.4 percent, which makes it a complete mockery of the five-year plan," said its chairperson Lim Kit Siang.

While DAP and non-governmental organisations are constantly condemning the poorly implemented system, Ibrahim said there is a lesson or two that Malaysia can learn from the United States where education is concerned.

Ibrahim said the meritocracy system is utilised in the US, "but only for admission into Ivy League universities, which are highly competitive ones".

As for the "less competitive" and "competitive" ones, such as those run by the states, the US universities are open to anyone.

"In the US, the good universities are normally the private institutions," said Ibrahim.

Thus, in democratising the Malaysian education, Ibrahim urged that more higher learning institutions, beginning from the community colleges, be set up to allow greater access to advanced learning.

Not cheap

"Malaysians should also be prepared to accept that good education does not come cheap. Nevertheless, we want as many Malaysians, regardless of age and ethnic group, to have access to it."

In justifying the meritocracy recently, Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad said despite higher intakes into the public universities this year — which he attributed to bumiputra students' better performance — the actual number of bumiputra students pursuing education at higher level is still very low.

He said most of the students pursuing higher education at private universities in Malaysia and abroad are the non-bumiputra.

In fact, Mahathir even produced figures to reveal that only 800 out of 17,000 Malaysian students in the United States are bumiputra.

This, he said, is because the non-bumiputra, who are mostly from the upper middle-class group, can afford to send their children to private universities abroad.

This argument certainly does not go well with the non-bumiputra. Dr Kua Kia Soong, an educationist who is concerned about Chinese education in the country, said public universities are run with taxpayers' money, and therefore must be made available to all Malaysians.

"Therefore, its selection process must be made fair and transparent," said Kua.

Mahathir has definitely missed a point here, wrote

a malaysiakini reader who appeared to be very upset with the premier's statement. Claiming to be a US graduate, the Chinese Malaysian pointed out that a majority of non-bumiputra students are "fee-paying students" since hardly any of them get government scholarship.

"These Chinese Malaysian students are trying every possible way to pursue a good education. Their parents sell their house, car, jewellery and make a lot of sacrifices to make sure that their children receive good education.

"Malay students are not dumb or stupid. It is just that their parents' priority is different from Chinese..." the writer said, adding that there are no less rich Malay parents, but many refuse to spend money for their children's higher education."

If that is the case, will Prof Ibrahim's dream come true? Are Malaysians actually ready for the democratisation of education?


This article is the third part of a four-part series on the controversy that arose out of the newly-implemented 'merit-based' admission into local universities. The final part will appear tomorrow.



Malaysiakini
news and views that matter


Sign In