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I can tell you from personal experience that getting a good internship in Malaysia is hard. There is no easy way to discern the good from the bad, and very few companies even have actual internship programmes. Those few that do tend to offer mixed results, with interns often feeling they are an afterthought and an adjunct to the organisation's work. (When I talk with friends who intern at local banks, they often have more stories to tell about running the photocopiers and buying kuih than they do about actual finance-related work.) Of course, where there's a problem, there's an opportunity. Some friends have set up Otak Otak, a project to match qualified interns with good companies, and provide structure to the internship programmes. They are currently looking for companies interested in hiring competent interns for a month or two, as well as interested students looking for internship opportunities in Malaysia. The website is otak2.com ; more details after the jump. Otak-Ot...

With the announcement of a Talent Corporation to bring home Malaysians who've gone overseas, this research — Plugging the Brain Drain — seems relevant. The findings are quite accessible to the layperson, but if you have a little statistical background, you'll definitely get a chance to grapple with some of the most extensive publicly-available analysis of our brain drain (that I know of, at any rate). It has its flaws, especially with regard to data collection (full disclosure: Kian Ming and I helped the author with some of the statistical analysis), but it is of course only an initial foray into studying the reasons behind why Malaysians leave — or come home. If you have any comments, do post them here or contact the author , Evelyn Wong, directly. Also do share if you know of any similar studies, or scholars working on this topic!

Eds.: The following is written by Tee Sui Seng, a Cantabrigian. The news that a Malaysian has been recognized as the top law student at the University of Cambridge initially filled me with much joy and pride and I wasted no time in letting my friends from all over the world know that we Malaysians are more than able to hold our own academically amongst the best brains in the world.However, this feeling of pride gradually gave way to a more sobering disappointment and eventually, even a little embarrassment as the facts of the story slowly sunk in. It did not take long to find out that the young man in question has spent his pre-university days in neighbouring Singapore, taking his A-levels on a scholarship there. This then led to the discovery that our dear neighbours very quickly realised his talents and wasted no time in offering him a scholarship to the University of Cambridge. It then came as no surprise why further down the article, it was then stated that our prodigious young tal...