Seems like a recent development, but the Public Services Department, has announced that they will be offering scholarships to anyone, who scored 9As and above, in last year’s SPM examinations. In addition, anyone who manages to secure a place in a top international university, will also be given scholarships. All this is regardless of background. I’m not sure if this is a good thing or bad thing overall.
Something similar actually came up in our TehTarik discussions yesterday. There are many weaknesses in the system that need to be addressed but I won’t go into them, as we’ve already talked about it yesterday. When the write up is ready, I might link it in here. However, there are some things that I would like to look at:
- Purely results based award.
This is a two edged sword. On the one side, it cuts through all sorts of arbitrary ethnic discrimination policies, which is a good thing. However, it cuts away all discriminatory policies, including the positive ones. Now, a 9A student from a rich family will be funded, while an 8A student from a poor one won’t be, which I think is not a great idea. The whole idea of getting an education is to gain social mobility. I also feel that a well-rounded 8A student deserves the scholarship more than a 9A bookworm. So, that is why I’m not sure if a totally blind policy, is a good thing. - Publicly funded education at the university level.
The new policy gives the students a lot of options in getting into university. They would be fully funded if they get into any of the local public universities, local foreign universities, and top international universities. So there should not be any complaints from any quarter. However, I’m only worried about where all this money is going to come from. The funding for public universities could be diverted from the existing PTPTN scheme. I’m a little concerned about the ones who get into top international universities.
Well, I’ve always been an advocate of our government’s policy of funding education. We are one of the few countries in this world, with such a generous government, when it comes to education. I also agree that we need to build human capital, in order to develop the country. However, one of the issues raised yesterday, was what to do with all these graduates.
We need to really ask ourselves if the existing job market is capable of absorbing all these people. With the numbers of unemployed graduates coming out each year, numbering more than 60000, we need to really ask ourselves what are we going to do with these people. I cannot help but wonder if the civil service actually has enough vacancies to staff all these scholars.
What will most likely happen, as has always been happening all this while, are that these scholars will not be absorbed into the civil service and be cast into the wind, so to speak. In the end, it wastes the tax dollars and the scholar’s time. So, maybe it’s a better idea to divert all that cash, into improving the economy and creating a job market first.
Some will say that this is a chicken and egg problem. But I think that it’s not and the evidence speaks for itself. The fact that our graduate unemployment rates are so high, means that there aren’t enough jobs for us. It is telling when we are importing foreign labour, to fill up all our low level jobs. When we start importing foreign nationals to fill up our professional jobs, that’s when we have a need for more graduates.
Sybreon Ones Nought 