Malaysia’s Top Scholars Sidelined in 2014 Budget … Where Art Thou?
It could have become a better budget had Najib provided some direction as to why the country needs qualified Malaysians to come to the fore, and especially for those who are currently living and working abroad to return to the country to serve it, in any field they are in.
MBP
The 2014 Budget which Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak presented is too general; it gives emphasis to the same areas that they have covered, which basically are those involving the industries and activities of all the ministries in the government.
It could have become a better budget had Najib provided some direction as to why the country needs qualified Malaysians to come to the fore, and especially for those who are currently living and working abroad to return to the country to serve it, in any field they are in.
Surely, the talk about encouraging Malaysians to pursue their education at some of the most prestigilous universities in the world, particularly the Ivy League and Oxbridge ones in America and the United Kingdom, respectively, is nothing but just talk.
The truth is that the government does not care for their personal well-being, and if their academic backgrounds and professional experiences in all the fields they are are crucial and beneficial to the growth and expansion of the industries and hence economy of the country, then surely, they should be given special roles to play in the industries they are in.
Why then encourage the students to pursue their education at such universities when the government does not really know what to do with them?
The ministry of education is organizing some town hall-type of activities to encourage people to attend them and give their views on how to further improve the level of education in the country.
Yet, the same ministry does not even know who they are and where they can be found. Some of them are already in these universities with the many others who have already returned to the country, quietly and unannounced.
They are not like the sportsmen and women who habitually attend sports meets all over the world, and if they lose, they are not condemned. However, if they win, it becomes a media attraction.
Scholars who go abroad to study in such prestigious universities are hardly given any notice, and even when they return they are not welcomed by the very ministries that should be first to embrace them, so that they are given the right treatment and posts in the ministries and agencies or other government-linked companies or GLCs to lead the departments which are suitable to them.
Some of them have wide professional exprience, and they can easily be taken in as consultants to the government or the ministries so that they are not led by the same tired and jaded PTD officers who move from one agency to another agency without showing any real or personal conviction.
These officers who hold the posts of the deputy and secretary-generals of the ministries are the ones who are always in the way of progress, because most of them are not qualified, but who assume such posts simply because they remain in the government service, so they could rise up the ladder to be what they are today, until they retire at the age of sixty, before they are given another post at another GLC.
No wonder some of the industries which the government is trying to develop cannot develop fully because they are held back because the ministries or agencies do not wish to have qualified persons messing around with them.
Malaysia cannot say that it has that many people who have academic qualification from the prestigious Ivy League and Oxbridge universities, and the few that we have must be utilized fully, or else they would wither and not able to contribute much because the are not given the right jobs with the right tasks to perform.
And it is also odd for Malaysia not to have anyone with degrees from these universities who are vice-chancellors or deans of the universities, when they are supposed to be the top brains, who must personally endeavor to excel in their education so that they can then look at the students in their respective universities to become good examples to them.
Malaysians who are teaching at the public or state universities are generally not so well-educated; they only have a string of degrees because they are paid to study and to get degrees.
So they normally go to non-competitive universities and work on research that is not relevant to the needs of the country because their main reason to pursue their education is to get a better post with better pay later. It is not for them to excel in their education to become internationally-recognized scholars or academics.
There is one so-called professor of rural poverty who lives in the city and who does not want to sit in the warungs or mix with the poor in the pasar malam. Yet, he has the audacity to claim to be an expert in rural poverty.
This explains why the so-called scholars that we have in the country are really not scholars in the right sense of the word, but officers of the universities, so their comments and views on anything are so general.
And when they retire from the universities, some go into politics or disappear.