faulker059

Recently, Kedah's GERAKAN Youth has come out with a proposal to create a free university that is open to all Malaysians, regardless of race. It received some attention when the Minister of Higher Education, Khaled Nordin, responded to this proposal with some disdain . I shall comment on the proposal to set up a Universiti Rakyat and then I'll talk about the Minister's response. This concept of a free university was first proposed by Kedah GERAKAN Youth Chief, Tan Keng Liang. The aims of this university are the following (I lifted this from the facebook group - Universiti Rakyat): This proposed University is a free university for all Malaysians regardless of race and entrace shall be based on merits. The selection of lecturers in this university shall also be based on merits and without any form of quota. In line with the reduction of the subsidy of petrol and diesel in Malaysia, it is hope that the Malaysian government can use part of the savings from the reduction of the s...

The issue of gender imbalance in our public universities is an issue which I've been tracking for some time. I suspect that it is a problem which cuts across racial lines but is especially serious among Malays, all the more because they comprise the majority of the population and those entering public universities. It is a complex problem which has many root causes and it should not be 'solved' by the implementation of a gender quota in our public universities. Thankfully, the Deputy Minister for Higher Education, Idris Haron, has resisted this temptation. This is one issue which has flown under the radar for some time. We've talked about the unemployability of some of our graduates, the poor quality of our universities and schools but we seldom discuss the fact that the proportion of guys who drop out of school at various stages is consistently higher than the proportion of girls. People drop out of school for all sorts of reasons and at all levels. While we have comp...

I was quite surprised to read Malaysiakini's exclusive two part interview with Rafiah Salim and how frank she was when she was interviewed. You can read the reports here and here . She certainly pulled no punches including a classic 'thing between the legs' line that may have been the highlight of the interview. I'll share some of my thoughts in regard to her tenure and the manner in which she was let go. When she was first appointed as UM's VC in August 2006, both Tony and I said positive things about her initially. She hit the right notes and said some progressive things in regard to raising the quality of academic at UM. Then came the ' silencing ' of Azmi Sharom, who was initially asked to stop writing his Star column. That decision was later changed to not writing anything about UM in that column. I also didn't like how she was trying to play up the appointment of Jeff Sachs as the Ungku Aziz chair of poverty studies because I knew that he would...

It was reported that Deputy House Speaker Wan Junaidi Tuanku Jaafar came out to vehemently deny that his Doctorate in Business Administration (DBA) was from a certain American Northeastate University, supposedly a fake degree mill. Instead, he told Malaysiakini that his DBA was obtained from the Southern California University for Professional Studies in 2005. While this school is not a fake degree mill, it's not exactly a stellar academic institution either. The Southern California University for Professional Studies (not exactly a name which inspires confidence, is it?) is now called the California Southern University . It also happens to be an online university which offers doctorate programs in business, psychology, criminal justice, and law. Now, I've never been a big fan of online universities when it comes to doctorate programs. Frankly, I don't see how someone who is working part time can find the time to read up on the relevant literature in a specific field and th...

I had a chuckle when I first read this newspaper report . Apparently the Terengganu state government wants to give out 25,000 laptops to Primary 5 students to replace their heavy textbooks. This is another example of a policy decision that was poorly conceived and will probably be poorly implemented as well. I think that the idea of giving away free laptops to students is a bad idea in principle especially if they are conventional laptops. (I'm a little bit more agnostic about the 100 dollar laptops which are being promoted by OLPC ) I think it diverts attention from other bigger problems which kids in rural and poorer schools face which is the lack of resources, poor infrastructure and poor teaching. There is no guarantee that having a laptop will improve the quality of teaching or learning or if it will help in reducing the digital divide between kids in urban and rural schools. But this specific idea in Terengganu seems even more ill-conceived. For example, these laptops are sup...

Short post from SK Thew, a former MMU student, on the new UM VC. Sounds positive.

Normally, we don't cover issues which are explicitly political in this blog. I bent this rule when I asked our readers to support Tony in the March GE (Note that I asked our readers to support Tony but not necessarily his party or the opposition). This time I have to bend the rules again since this concerns Tony himself. He's been arrested and put in jail after participating in a peaceful anti-ISA gathering in PJ. You can read more about it here . Good news is that he's physically ok. Let's hope that he will be released soon so that he can continue to raise issues of importance including issues to do with education in this country in parliament.

Hot off the press - Dr. Ghauth Jasmon has been picked as the latest VC of UM. According to the bio page of Unity College International, where he is the current CEO, "Prof Ghauth Jasmon graduated with a First Class Honours Degree in Electrical Engineering in 1979 and the PhD degree in Power Systems Engineering in 1982 from the University of London." Before his current appointment at UCI, he was the president of MMU. My first thoughts on this appointment is to wonder if the Minister of Higher Education, Khaled Nordin, actually went through a VC selection committee, something which Tok Pa, the former Minister had promised, was to be a permanent committee. Tony has blogged extensively on this issue before including here and here . If this committee was tasked with the job of searching for a replacement for Rafiah Salim, it must have done its work very quietly since we never heard about its work anywhere. My suspicion is that they were probably not consulted at all, if such a c...

Three Pakatan youth leaders representing the three Pakatan parties in power in the Selangor state government have asked for Datin Rosmah Mansor, the wife of soon to be Prime Minister, Najib Tun Razak to quit her position as the Chancellor of the University Industry of Selangor (UNISEL). The same Youth leaders have also called for her to be replaced if she doesn't step down. It seems that the Selangor MB, Khalid Ibrahim, will stick with Rosmah as the chancellor of UNISEL, at least for now. Is this a fair demand on the part of the Pakatan youth leaders in Selangor? They have said that she is 'academically and morally unfit' for the position of the chancellor of UNISEL. According to the Unisel website , Rosmah obtained a bachelors degree in Anthropology and Sociology in Universiti Malaya. She then enrolled in a post-graduate programme at Louisiana State University, USA and graduated with a Master of Science majoring in Sociology and Agriculture Extension. First of all, we h...