YOURSAY ‘Hats off to the minister for taking the pains to write this article.’

Vijay47: Whether I agree or not with Education Minister II Idris Jusoh, I must give him credit for taking the pains to write a lengthy justification, in excellent English, of comments he had made earlier.

More importantly, he has dared to enter the lion's den in writing to Malaysiakini whose readers are known to be pretty sharp cookies.

It is comforting to come across a minister, an Umno one at that, who does not threaten to charge those who disagree with sedition. Good job, Idris.

Anonymous #59879079: Vijay47, what makes you think Idris wrote this lengthy reply? I bet my last dollar this was written by a paid writer.

Of all the reasons on why foreign students flock to Malaysia, the key point - quality of education - is missing from the list.

And if you look at the list of countries of where the foreign students are from, all are ‘not as developed’ as Malaysia. Do you see any students from ‘developed’ nations?

Nippon: Idris, you might have gotten some points right in your explanation.

I would suggest that you use the phrase, “we have improved dramatically” rather than the phrase “we have world class higher education”.

From what we know, we are still not there yet. Indeed, perception and facts don’t point that way.

Anon1: Hats off to the minister for taking the pain to write this article, complete with statistics and data.

This is what citizens of a developed nation would expect from high-ranking civil servants instead of unleashing the Sedition Act when queried or criticised.

Idris, you made some positive points but I do not agree that the quality of our educational institutions can be measured by the number of foreign students studying there.

We need to look at the quality of graduates produced by such institutions. Just look at the number of our local graduates who are unable to secure jobs and their English proficiency. That tells you where we stand.

Old timer: Obviously Idris has never taught or done research in a university or read enough research papers to know the real meaning of “world class”.

Why can't he say we have improved and will continually endeavour to improve, instead of a long essay probably written by someone to defend his wrong perception of “world class”.

Hbasill: Yes, we are good at some fields, but sadly below average in most fields of education. The four professors you mentioned don’t even make up one percent of the total professors in Malaysia.

For the country to grow in the right direction, all professors must be required to undertake research of world standard. Look at the National University oif Singapore (NUS) and the number of professors there who are world renowned.

The other citations about our youth emerging near tops in competitions and awards are nothing to shout about.

We Malaysians must ask ourselves how many Malaysian inventions have translated into multi-billion-dollar businesses. Inventions are plenty around the world, even in Third World countries but most, if not all, don’t make it in the real world.

We were once a great nation but today we have regressed to a nation of mediocre people.

Negarawan: While NUS is ranked at 25, their minister for education did not find any need to make a press statement about how great they are.

The Singapore universities work hard, and are efficient and productive in both administration and research. They don't need to track their ranking, as they know that the results of their hard work will automatically fall into place.

Singapore ensures that the right people are in the right jobs, and meritocracy is the driver for their success story.

In Malaysia, the education minister boasted about our education system despite the deteriorating ranking, with UM now ranked at 151, a far cry from NUS, though both universities were from the same entity prior to the separation. Why should this be surprising?

The local Malaysian universities are so backwards and mediocre as a result of Islamisation and race-based policies, that they cannot attract top academicians and students from developed countries. The brain drain will only get worse with Umno around.

Malaysia is Doomed!: There are two ways to immediately improve our education standards: Immediately change the learning of maths and science to English. And depoliticise the position of education minister.

TehTarik: True. Not only do we have a world-class education system but also a world-class economy, healthcare, infrastructure, research and development, etc.

We will be a developed nation in 2020. We have enough human capital to propel our economy to be the richest in Asia (outside Japan) in the next 20 years.

The minister has already spoken that within the next few years we will have a Noble Prize laureate. Also that a Malaysian movie will win an Oscar.

Bank Negara’s Zeti Akhtar Aziz (Asia's best central bank governor) had stated earlier this week that the ringgit is undervalued. Maybe the ringgit's real value should be more like US$1 = RM3, rather than the current RM3.60.

So to all Malaysian doomsayers. You are all wrong. A very bright future awaits us all.

LEF: Idris should be given kudos for bothering to respond to the many criticisms. But reading his response, I feel that there is a great deal of denial and hiding behind dodgy explanations, cherry picking one or two exceptions, and twisting the words “world class” to mean something else from what is widely understood.

Learning to be humble and admitting that we have problem with our universities is the first step in fixing the problem.

Patting ourselves on the back and saying everyone else's rankings suck show ourselves as lacking in confidence and competence to right a wrong quickly.

The Analyser: "Improving critical thinking skills... are among the priorities". And that, Idris, is the single most important function of university education.

Malaysia is littered with degree holders from all sorts of universities from the best to the worst, but without critical thinking skills they are nothing more than well-informed drones, soon to be out-of-date.

Foodforthought: Simply put, Bolehland is always amongst the top, when the table is turned upside down.

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