Whose lost is this?

Prenote: It has been more than a year since the last post was posted in this blog. It was due to many reasons: studies in final year, thesis, personal vow (not to write more than a certain number of posts), time constraint ( most posts took me up to 5 to 7 hours each to write --partly due to my bad typing skill and the sense of perfection when writing) and many more. But now, the issue of PSD (JPA in bahasa melayu) scholarships, which will be phased out starting next year, make me feel that I have an obligation to write again, on this particular issue atleast (taking my time out of watching World Cup and applying for jobs).

P/S: I'm not sure if I have any follower at all at this blog, but if I do, I deeply regret for not writing more. My sincere apology. Cheers!

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1. To many who already knew me, it is a well-known fact that I am one of those lucky ones who benefited from a scholarship to study abroad. However, I was under a different scholarship, not PSD's (Public Service Department). The latest hot topic in Malaysia now is government had decided that PSD scholarship for undergraduate studies abroad will be phased out starting next year. Even though this matter might not directly affect me (since I have just finished my undergraduate degree, and also for not being under PSD), I still feel that I have a duty to speak, not only as someone who benefited from studying overseas with a scholarship, but also as someone who had a long 13-year education in chinese day-school who dare say to have a reasonable understanding of other races: their culture, issues and needs. (Someday I would pen down on this topic)


2. This issue, I believe, started when there were too many complaints about the allocation of the PSD scholarship for undergraduate studies abroad. Traditionally, the scholarships were awarded to qualified bumiputeras (Note: the original people of Malaya; the Malays, Sabahans, Sarawakians and other minorities. In english term widely used in other countries especially Australia, the aboriginals (no offence ok, just an explanation to non-Malaysians who read this post)), until it changed just a few years ago. In early 2000s, 10% of them were granted to the non-bumiputera. In 2006 (or maybe 2007, I don't particularly remember), the new policy was to give only 55 % of these scholarships to the bumiputera.


3. The original intention of giving out scholarships to bumiputera was to help those qualified but financially not capable bumiputera a chance to relish their potential by giving them the best education in top universities around the world. This is what I like to call, part of a greater positive redistribution measure by the government, to help the bumiputeras to compete with the non-bumis, who have been having a much bigger share of the economy since our independence. This is not a totally new measure by a government, as the Australian government and its corporations have always been giving many privileges to the aboriginals and Torrest Strait islanders such as greater work and education opportunities, in order to ensure that these less fortunate people are not being left out of the economy development. There are a few more example of positive redistribution measures similar to this in other part of this world, either in economy, education, sports or any other components of our live. Some might call it reaffirmative action. Another good example is like how the FIFA spend a lot of money to develop soccer culture and facilities in poor African countries, compared to other parts of this world.


4. So this year when the Malaysian economy is still recovering from the financial crisis, the Malaysian government has taken measures to cut government spending hence reducing budget deficit, including reducing the PSD scholarship numbers by 800, to 1200 (It is believed that government spent around RM 1.24 billion each year to sponsor these students under PSD). Worse, the number of non-bumi students getting sponsorship this year is said to drop to around 20% of total number of PSD scholarships. This has lead to a general dissatisfaction among the non-bumis. Many complained, quietly as well as openly in the media and prints. Some believe that the government are not keeping the promise to give a fairer and more equal opportunity to them. This is reflected in by-elections where the government candidates lost in seats where the non-bumis have greater percentage of population. I strongly believe that part of the reason for this move to scrap the scholarships could be to satisfy these minorities, mainly the chinese and the indian population. I say this only because these scholarships only amounted to RM1.2 billion, a mere amount compared to the RM 191billion projected government spending in 2010 (RM1.2b is roughly 0.6%), or the RM74billion annually spent in other forms of subsidies for the people (RM1.2b is ~1.7%). There are many more ways to cut spending than scrapping scholarships. What does a mere 0.6% means to the total budget? How do you see a 1.7 percent cut could possibly have much change to the RM74billion subsidy system? Dont tell me that no one in the government agrees with me that the social impact of scrapping this scholarship could possibly be much greater than the mere figure in terms of percentage of the total budget?

So the more logical reason, in my opinion, would be: no more scholarships, no more issue, right?


5. I believe that I am not the only one who disagree with this move by the government. As a matter of fact, I know that this move would only diminish the efforts by previous governments and prime ministers to reduce the gap between the races in Malaysia. The inequality is not only confined purely to the economic power or purchasing power, it is actually wide spread in many other sectors of our nation: economy, social, education, almost everything. From ownership of real estate properties (malays own ~ 15% ONLY), number of students in critical streams (especially engineering, medicine, pharmacology, law excluding syariah, accounting, economics etc) in public university (keep declining since the introduction of merit-based intake system), incomes, savings, to almost everything, the malays are lagging behind. Since this topic on scholarship is co-related to education, I would just focus on this for now.


6. Education is the main determinant of the number of professionals in the future. Thanks to the effort of previous prime minister such as Tun Razak and Tun Mahathir, of which both are strong supporters of affirmative action, the malays are catching up, slowly but steadily, especially in terms of the number of professionals. I have read somewhere that now, about 40% of the doctors and engineers in our country are of malay origin (in the other professional fields we are still lagging way behind). Although it does not reach the ideal 60% to reflect the percentage of bumis in our population, I believe this is already a great achievement. This is the ultimate proof that the affirmative actions taken by previous generations are starting to bear fruit. However, with the trend of declining malay students in the critical streams, this figure will definitely drop below current level in the future. Worse, without PSD scholarship, this will only accelerate the declination of number of malay professionals in the future. This is because, most of the PSD scholarships are given to students who undertake medicine, engineering, and other critical science courses. I believe a good percentage of current malay professionals are overseas graduates.


7. I would like to share an interesting fact that there are around 17,000 Malaysian students in Australia at any given time. As someone who graduated from Sydney, one of the top eight university in Australia, I dare say that majority of them are non-bumis, or to be exact mainly are chinese. To get an idea of the ratio of bumi to non bumi Malaysian students in Australia, lets do a simple math. PSD sponsors around 2000 students each year. MARA has maybe about the same number. Assuming that each student takes an average of 4 years to finish a degree (4 years for engineering, 5yrs for medic, 3yrs for accounting/finance), so at anytime, there will be 8,000 students sponsored by PSD, so does MARA. Say 60% of PSD students abroad are malays, that would be 4,800. Add that to the 8000 MARA students, there would be around 12 thousand sponsored malay students around the world (as other scholarships by organizations or private companies are very limited). Considering most of these students further their studies in three major country namely Australia, USA, and Britain, let say a quarter of them, or around 3000 of these malay students went to Australia. I would admit that I personally know or have met not more than 50 private (self-sponsor) malay students throughout my 4 year student life in Sydney, but I know or have met than 500 students of malaysian chinese or indian origin. Let say I have only met/heard of/knew one tenth of the malay private students in sydney, that would only bring the total malay private students in Sydney to 500. Assuming that Malaysian students are equally distributed in Sydney, Melbourne & Perth, that would only bring the number of private malay students in whole Australia to, say 2000. (another 500 from smaller city like Adelaide and Brisbane combined). So in total, we would only have 5000 malay students in whole Australia at any given time (both sponsored and private combined). This is still far from the 12,000 chinese or indian Malaysian students in Australia. This ratio is almost 2:5, two malay students for every 5 non-malays. Without the PSD scholarship, it could go up to 1:4, or four non-malay Malaysian students for every malay students in Australia. My rough calculation might not be exactly accurate, but it wont be too far off the exact figure. No wonder there was one Malaysian leader who used to say, "Even if we add up the number of all these sponsored malay students, it is still far from the number of non-malay students overseas", when he shrug off complaints about government scholarships for malay (back then scholarships to overseas are for malays only. I dont remember who said it coz what I read was only a re-quote in an article).


8. The government proposed that the undergraduate scholarships to be replaced by post-graduate scholarships and also scholarships to top universities in the world (referring to Harvard, MIT, Cambridge, Oxford level universities). The other reason for the abolishment of undergraduate level scholarships abroad is to ensure that our best brains remain in the local university system. However, both the reasons and the new proposals have critical flaws. They lack a holistic analysis, especially in longer term, and in terms of the social impact. I can easily give many counter arguments and reasons of why the new proposal will not work as it is planned.


Government's Proposal: Only Those Managed to Get into World's Top Universities Will Get Scholarships

9. First of all, a very top university usually has limited places for international students. Very very few Malaysians could enter them, especially the ones in US (thanks to the SAT test, where they rank the students, unlike UK systems where many could get straight As in A-levels but the students are not ranked). Furthermore, in order to go to universities in UK or US, students have to undertake pre-uni courses such as A-levels or SAT. Since government are no longer sponsoring post SPM students according to plan plus UK and US universities do not recognise our SPM or STPM, so the only other way is students have to study A-levels or SAT courses with their own money first, and later try apply to get into these top university. However, considering most malay families could not afford these pre-uni courses, automotically they will not have a chance or a shot to apply to these top universities at all, or have no slightest chance of getting a PSD scholarship at all since the precondition could not be met. So in the end, if there were any malay students who would gain from this, definitely would be those from which their family could afford to send them to private institutions to undertake A-levels or its equivalent. If this is the case, many bright but poor malay students will not be able to attempt to get into these top uni. Don't forget that the less number of people attempt, less chances we have to get more malay students into these top universities. There is a good example similar to this. Right now, some GLCs offer only limited number of scholarships to those ALREADY secure a placement in university abroad. So some students who initially were not able to secure scholarship after SPM, had gone to private institution for A-levels with their own money and secure a placement in university abroad, before securing a scholarship from these GLCs or some other private companies. So those who could afford it (own money for pre-uni) have the advantage of having a second shot at getting a scholarship while those from poor family would definitely has no opportunity to do something like this. I personally knew a few of these lucky ones. Same thing, if the government proceed with the plan to only sponsor those who already have an offer to a top university, I think only the same kind of people stand a chance to get a scholarship. I wonder what the reaction of the people would be. If not, the other way to do it, is the government have to sponsor the A-levels or SAT test for all the excellent SPM students, let them have a shot at trying to get into Oxbridge, MIT or Havard, to be fair. However, if they did not make it, I do not think that these students from oversea foundation programs could go into a local public university either. So, this simply doesn't work too. Furthermore, if there is anyone who managed to get into any of those top universities I mentioned, there is already no shortage of scholarships for them at this moment, really. Currently many organizations are more than willing to sponsor or give study loans to them.


The Argument: To Avoid Brain Drain and also to Increase the Quality of Our Local Universities

10. If the plan is pushed forward, the government will end up keeping only the best malay brains (but not the non-malays) in local universities because no matter what, the non-malays will still keep sending their kids overseas to further the studies, with the financial muscles that they possessed, worsen by the limited placements and lack of quality of our local universities. Worst, without scholarships to overseas, many of these bright students will be fighting for limited places in local uni. Local universities will be overcrowded by straight As students. If now we have been hearing complaints about non-Malay students with 8As or 9As in SPM (or 3As STPM) are given unwanted placement in local uni (for example the forestry course), later we will hear 10As or 11As SPM students or STPM students with 5 As are being offered these kind of placements in the local uni. This is because we have too many straight As students, and all are stuck in local universities without the PSD scholarships to overseas. Worst case scenario, we might hear that more and more bright students going overseas looking for alternatives such as taking up scholarships to NUS for example, or something similar due to limited placement locally. I believe that even if I myself was in that kind of situation, I might be tempted to find other alternatives too, better than studying an unwanted or unpopular course where I know I will definitely have problems looking for a job with that degree in the future. The brain drain problem that we are already having might get even worse. Imagine we have only about 900 placements for medicine course in local uni, and without the PSD scholarship to oversea (PSD usually give out a few hundred scholarships to study medic overseas), too many students will be competing for the already scarce local placements. On top of that, less doctors will be produced in the future. Dont forget that to achieve developed nation status, achieving high human development index (HDI) is very important and the ratio of doctors to population is part of HDI. Without enough number of doctors with quality, we will never be a real developed nation. So government actually is creating another problem by covering a problem. Plus, having best students in local education system alone will not raise the standard or ranking of our local uni, if that is what the government is looking at. There are other factors such as quality of lecturers, ratio of lecturer to students, number of international students, quality of research, graduate to undergraduate ratio, funding, and many more that determine the ranking and prestige of a university.

On the contrary, giving scholarship to our best students is actually the best way to keep our best brain. Each scholarship comes with a bond, where students have to work with the sponsor for a certain number of years. Furthermore, international students in UK or Australia who are sponsored by any government bodies actually are not eligible to apply for any type of visa after the expiry of their study visa, and this includes the work visa or visa for permanent residency. So students have no choice but to come back and work in Malaysia. I am not sure how it works in US, but one thing I'm quite sure is, sponsored students who end up working overseas are usually those who came back but were not hired by the respective sponsor body, and were let go by the sponsor (Note: students usually have to wait for six month, if did not receive any offer from the sponsor body within this period, they are officially free to go and work anywhere, only need to repay the sponsor a certain sum of money based on the result).


Proposal 2: Send Only Post-Grad Abroad. To be Exact, Send MORE.


11. There two major flaws in this proposal. Firstly, post graduate studies are research based. So by sending more post graduates overseas, local uni in Malaysia will be deprived of top quality researchers and researches. As the result, the quality and world ranking of local universities will drop further. For sure, in case any of these graduate students have any major discovery or break through in their research, the university in overseas where they are doing the research will be getting all the credits for it, not our local uni. Right now our universities in Malaysia have more than enough research grants, just that they lack top quality research and researchers who can produce research that could be commercialized or could win us our first Nobel price. Of course by saying this, doesn't mean that I am against sending post graduate students abroad. Not at all. I am just saying that this proposal is not perfect. I strongly believe that our researchers/post grads should get exposure in top universities overseas, but I would also suggest that perhaps we should organize more joint research with other top universities in order to produce good research journals.


12. Secondly, sending students overseas for undergraduate studies will have more impacts, socially and also personal development wise. As a matter of fact, most post graduate students in overseas are in their late twenties or thirties, and most already married and some even have kids. Of course this translates into more money have to be given to them. But more importantly, what I'm trying to say is, most of these post grads do not mingle around much, not with the locals (mat salleh) nor with other Malaysian students especially with the undergraduates or with those from other races (indian or chinese). This partly is due to their hectic research work, compounded with family commitment. And age could possibly be a factor too. So they usually, especially those with family, only hang out with a small group of other post graduate Malaysian students. They are not active with clubs or society in the university too, except for the religion-based society(Note: This is purely my observation from four years of studying in Sydney. I assume other places would not be much different. I'm sorry if I'm wrong or being over-generalise, but I believe my other friends in Sydney will agree with me generally). So the only thing these people really benefited from studying abroad, is the technical knowledge gained, or the research done. Personal development wise, I am not so sure (maybe they make a few more friends lah). I doubt too if they contributed anything in increasing understanding between races of Malaysian.


13. On the other hand, the undergraduate students, being young foolish and brave, usually will participate in all sort of activities while at overseas. Hanging out with the locals, joining clubs and societies, participating in Malaysian based clubs and activities, traveling and backpacking to other cities and places, just to name a few. With these exposures, they become more open minded, they absorb and learn new things everyday, they get to know other races and cultures, they befriended with malaysian of other background and of different races, they become braver, have more confidence, and they benefited in many more ways. I personally appreciate the personal developments I could see blossoming in myself and my friends around me. I believe it also help these Malaysian of different races to get to know each other better. I even heard many of my Malaysian Indian and Chinese friends in Sydney who admitted that they were surprised that they end up befriended with so many malays and finally change their mindset about us. They learned that what they thought about the malays in general are wrong all this while. And the same goes to the malay students. I believe some might have not encountered or befriended or working together with the chinese or indians before this (due to the education system of Malaysia where we go to separate schools, and bright malay students usually go to boarding schools). I sometimes even cant help to think that Malaysians abroad are more united in some ways. And this, partly due to the effort of the government sending the students abroad with the PSD scholarship. The government indirectly provided the opportunity for us to be united, to be true Malaysians. Not to forget the opportunity to widen our view, to gain more knowledge, and to reshape our personal development. I, my father, my family members, and other students who benefited from the opportunity to study abroad with scholarships, owe the nation for this. And these who benefited, I believe some of them will become our leader in the future, someday. And I dare say, without the scholarship, my father might end up still being a farmer like his father, and I myself might still stuck in the village (read: kampung) till now. Wallahualam.


14. Just a story to share, on my flight back home (for good), the passenger next to me, a chinese lady, told me that she was in my shoe many many years ago. I did not get it at first, til later I learned that she actually was a PSD scholar many years ago. With it she managed to become a teacher, later study finance part time, and now a chartered financial advisor. And with her position now, she has the money to send her kids overseas. She was on the way home from visiting her kids in Sydney. She said without it, she might still stuck in some kampung baru cina somewhere. I smiled when I hear that, because deep down I know too, without scholarships, my family and I might exactly be like that too. The scholarships actually give benefit to many people in many many ways.

So without these PSD scholarships to overseas, we as a nation lose more than we gain. Some will see it as everyone's lost, but I personally think that the lost is greater for the malays. Because I knew, so many malay talents have been polished and so many potentials have been unleashed, with the help of these PSD scholarships. And many of them have become leaders in many aspects of our nation, and many more have indirectly benefited from these people. The least of all, they managed to change their own fortune around, and contributed back to the society. I remember when I was younger and naive I used to ask my father, "why didn't you quit the university and join any private firm, with your qualification in engineering plus there are not so many malay engineers yet out there, you sure can make big bucks." My father's answer was simple, he said, "I was a farmer's son and government give me an opportunity to study abroad, without it I'm no one. If I work in private company I may make money if lucky, but I'm only helping myself and my family. And that is not what I want. Staying with university, atleast I know I can help develop so many more malay students to achieve what they want in life." I may not fully share the passion but I see a strong example of how a PSD scholarships to overseas indirectly helped so many people. There are surely many more stories like this, and many more people who benefited from it directly and indirectly. Allahualam.


15. Anyways, there was an old English proverb, "Don't cut off your nose to spite your face" which according to wikipedia, means that we shouldn't be self-destructive in over-reaction to a problem, be it a financial (deficit budget) problem or the problem of dissatisfaction among the minorities. For sure, these PSD scholarships to overseas bring greater benefits to all aspects of our society, than the superficial financial burden it carries. Or better said, so don't throw the baby out with the bath water.


Many times, I hope that all these are just scare tactics by the government to quell the arguments and opposition regarding the PSD placements issue. Hopefully the government is not serious about abolishing the PSD scholarships. Like I said before, I will not be affected by this change, but I am seriously hoping the government will not abolish it.


Lets hope, everybody. Cheers!