YOURSAY Many foreign students coming here don’t get places in UK, USA...

Are our varsities on par with world's best?

Dont just talk: Our education system is at par with those of developed nations, such as United Kingdom, Australia and Germany, just by the fact that 135,000 foreign students made up 10 percent at national higher educational institutions in the country. So says Second Education Minister Idris Jusoh.  

Out of the 135,000 foreign students, how many are genuine students who attend classes in the university? A majority of students from African nations abuse their student visas, overstay and are involved in illegal activities.  

You can bluff some Malaysians some of the time, but not all Malaysians all the time. Idris is either blurred or blind, when none of our universities are among the top 100 in global rankings.

Anonymous #81405125: Most of the foreign students come from the Muslim third world countries. Look at the breakdown. They are from Nigeria, Sudan, Ethiopia, the Middle East, Iran and Iraq.  

These students simply cannot gain entry into UK, USA, Europe, because of Islam and strict visa requirements in these countries. Because of Islam, we easily grant them visas and places in our Malaysian Muslim universities.  

Come look at a multimedia university in Malacca. See how many of those admitted there open Arabian restaurants, car rentals, furniture shops and stationery shops. When they come in, many do illegal activities. Many never come to study; they see Malaysia as a base to move on to other countries.

Our minister is still in dream mode. He will only wake up when the country is taken over by foreigners.  

Multi Racial: To be fair to this Umno minister, at least he is consistent with the rest of Umno and BN ministers. They are all the same. It is all about quantity and not quality.  

Malaysians score more As than before, more than everyone else. We can now conclude Malaysians are the world's best. Malaysia has a large number of foreign students, therefore we must have world’s best education. Never mind about the quality of students in Malaysia. As long as we have quantity, we must be very good.

Anonymous_1408265047: I do not understand why so much comment is generated by a statement of a politician when politicians are a class generally held in low esteem. The status of politicians and the likes of the judiciary have been well earned. They have no one else to blame but themselves.  

However, the standard of education is so low in Malaysia that a comment about it is necessary. Generally a degree from a tertiary education establishment in Malaysia will enable its holder a place in the first, or perhaps second year, in an Australian university.  

I have a first cousin who is a professor at a university in Australia and his comment to me was that Malaysian students really struggle because their underlying education is so poor.

Sinan Belawan: This second education minister is dragging Malaysian university education further down by claiming "Malaysia's higher education is now on par with those of developed nations, including the United Kingdom, Germany and Australia".  

This perception, based on the number of foreign students here, will never see tertiary education improve in this country. In addition to the reasons cited by MP Ong Kian Meng on why foreign students choose Malaysia, I would add corruption in education as another.  

Corruption comes in various forms, such as direct buying of degrees, poor governance of corporatised higher education, lack of academic integrity, etc. The minister and the Education Ministry have ignored corruption in education in Malaysia.

The Analyser: Ong, pretty well everyone outside the Umno/Islam heirarchy agrees with you. What I would like to know is how "the opposition" would go about resolving the problem?  

How would you tactfully and ethically get rid of the "dead wood in the system - let's say within five years? How would you go about recruiting quality staff, bearing in mind that the whole of the tertiary education world outside Malaysia would shun local universities as a step backwards on the career ladder?  

What strategies would you adopt to resolve the problem that the analytical thinking skills of the local kids were destroyed by their parents and their religion?

MingXiang: Mr Second Minister, I should explain to you that the higher the number, the lower the ranking.

Malaysia ku: With such nonsensical illogic emanating from a minister helming the education portfolio, no wonder his usage of superlatives is inversely proportional to his cerebral content. With such a huge foreign labour population in Malaysia, we are already First World status, no?

Hope 4 a better Msia: This chap will be scolded by his boss, the real Education Minister Muhyiddin Yassin, because he is not telling the truth. The truth is, according to Muhyiddin, the Malaysian education system is better than that of the UK, US and Germany.

Boonpou: For Malaysian universities to recapture their status, they have to abolish their racial politics whereby incoming students are accepted not based on race, and faculty members are promoted not based on race but on intellectual merit.  

Only when that happens will you find graduating students who can think and speak eloquently and faculty members who do not suffer from intellectual inferiority.  

You might be spending millions upon millions on infrastructure and have more and more local universities, but what good it is when the raw materials (both in terms of faculty members and students) are of low quality? Do excuse my Marxist factory metaphor.  

Never mind the fact that you also have deans, provosts, or presidents of universities who do not possess intellectual acumen, which is a worldwide phenomenon. They occupy these positions because they are "yes men and women" for the higher ups.

Myop101: Just look at the employability of our local graduates, compared with foreign graduates. This will tell you a lot on the confidence of our business sector regarding our local graduates.

Idon'tlikekangkung: Without meaning to offend anyone, you may have students going to a particular country simply because the system there is substandard and the entrance requirements are below par.  

What the country needs is a system that admits students based on merit. Oh, the system also needs to make sure that its lecturers are recruited and promoted based on world class merit, not on the colour of their skin.

Odin: When you have people like Idris and Muhyiddin in charge of education, that is, people who are totally lost in their airy-fairy world of self-deception and self-gratification, you cease to wonder why education in Malaysia is what it is.  

In the 2014 Times Higher Education World University Rankings, none of the universities in Malaysia were placed even in the top 200. Top 200, all right? Never mind the top 100.

On the other hand, Singapore's NUS, which shared the same beginnings with Universiti Malaya, was ranked 25th. That is only two positions below Japan, 18 positions higher than Hong Kong, and 21 higher than China.

Negarawan: The problem with the Umno government is that most of their ministers are incompetent and ignorant. It is a top-down problem starting from the prime minister himself; hence Umno wastes millions of ringgit on foreign consultants to make up for their deficiency.  

These consultants not only charge exorbitant amounts, possibly due to kickbacks, but also do not produce good results because they do not understand the local issues well enough.  

Other leading nations like Singapore have highly qualified ministers who formulate their own thinking, programmes and policies. If one walks around the campus of a local university, one will notice mostly foreign Muslim students from the Middle East and poor African countries on their government scholarships.  

Hardly the calibre of students one would find in top universities in Europe or the US. In the news, we have seen many of these students involved in crime as well.

Not Smart: You don't need a rocket scientist to verify the second education minister's statement and claim. By the standard of English displayed by many commentators in the media, it is sufficient for one to assess our standard of education.  

The minister has to disclose from which countries the bulk of the foreign students come from and further, whether his numbers are just based on the student visas issued.  

We know that many do come into the country with student visas but they soon start to do some sort of "business" and even perform the role of religious teachers (ustaz). Our education system should first improve the dire standard of our pathetic students before we blow our horn.

Legit: This is how our half-baked leaders brainwash the people and a lot of uninformed and naive Malaysian fall for it. You just need to put your head out a little and see what is happening around us.  

Many of the countries are moving forward fast and in the right direction because they see the need to compete and excel.  

However, in Malaysia, our politicians are more concerned with sodomy and enriching themselves by stashing away their wealth in foreign countries. The policies are bad and regressive and nobody gives a damn.  

Many intelligent people leave the country and we get all the low skilled Banglas, Nepalese, Myanmars, Indonesians and the criminals from Africa. One wonders how this country will look like 10 years down the line.

Tok Karut: With the ringgit at 0.28 to the US cent, it's just a cheap place to be.

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