Friday, July 15, 2005

Bureaucratic Bungle @ MMU?

Thanks to Jeff Ooi for highlighting this letter/issue on his blog.

Read up on the bungle by Multimedia University (MMU) on the enrollment application by Mr Tom Tw Ooi's son in his letter published in Malaysiakini.com dated June 22nd.

Key
highlights are quoted here:
[My son] consulted with a counsellor from the MMU. My son was interested in the B.Sc in Financial Engineering (FE) offered by the university. After reviewing my son's result, she confirmed that he was qualified for the degree course with the proviso that he undertakes the foundation course in Information Technology first.

Then on June 10, at a briefing by the university’s head of Foundation Studies and the dean of IT, he was told the foundation course in IT would not lead to the degree in FE. The correct foundation course was Management.

My son then approached the counsellor he first consulted and instead of righting her wrong, she sent him to the head of admissions. This irked me and I reproached the counsellor by phone. Her reply was: ‘Look, I have thousands of students to look after ... not just your son alone. If you are not happy you can complain to the president of MMU for all I care’.
I think Mr Tom Tw Ooi should just publish the name of the relevant counsellor. Why protect her name when she clearly deserves to be "outed" in public for this terrible attitude?

Important note: Please read update on issue here.

On a separate topic, is
B.Sc in Financial Engineering (FE) one of the fancy degrees I blogged about here?

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

I think we ought to listen to both sides of the story before blaming them.

http://www.malaysiakini.com/letters/37285

Anonymous said...

Financial engineering is not a Mickey Mouse degree.

It is intensely mathematical and requires a brain the size of a small ox just to maintain a passing grade.

Golf Afflicted said...

Hi, I'm not implying that Financial Engineering is a Mickey Mouse degree. I'm asking whether it should be a "degree" course in itself or would it be better as an elective or specialisation course within a "wider" degree course.

For e.g., "environmentally friendly nuclear power generation" may be a highly advanced course, but should we be offering degree courses on such? Or should it just be part of a say, Physics degree?

:) Tony

Anonymous said...

Tony, fyi, quite a number of prestigious universities in the world offer Financial Engineering degrees, either as first degree or second degree. NUS for example, offers both Bsc. in FE as well as Msc. in FE. UC Berkeley, Stanford, University of Chicago, Columbia University and NYU are some other universities that also offer Financial Engineering degrees. Sometimes the term 'Financial Engineering' is replaced with 'Financial Mathematics' or 'Computational Finance', but the concepts and general aim for any of these courses would be almost similar. Perhaps, what one should be more concerned with is the course's contents as well as its application in the relevant industries. For more information on Financial Engineering visit the International Association of Financial Engineering's website: http://www.iafe.org

eyries said...

The subject is one of the toughest in MMU, and yes, they did last minute change it to a Management Course... But they did say during the orientation that you may change course for free within the first few weeks, and besides, majority of the foudation subjects are the same... =)