Tuesday, December 06, 2005

Edu-City: Another Hare-Brained Idea?

Just a week ago, the New Straits Times reported a story on the efforts of United Engineers Malaysia (UEM) to "sell" Bandar Nusajaya in Johor to "leading foreign universities to build branch campuses."
The project known as Edu-City will be an integral component of the new Nusajaya township where Johor's new administrative capital is being built.

"There is a great deal of interest from leading American, Australian and UK-based universities in Nusajaya. We should be able to announce the details by the middle of next year."
It was stated that different institutions will set up different campuses specialising in different fields.

Can this idea actually take off? Why will these "leading" American, Australian and UK universities want to set up specialised campuses in Nusajaya (which at this point of time, is still sparsely populated)?

The property division of UEM has in the most recent quarter registered a pre-tax loss of RM2.6 million. Is there going to be further losses to come with the launch of the "Edu-city" project? Thankfully this is a private sector project and the tax payer's monies are not utilised to fund it.

6 comments:

clk said...

Another mktg gimmick to attract land buyers. Nothing to do with the academia.

Anonymous said...

The special rights and privileges, while being implemented for the malays in full force, have also been used as a deadly weapon to suppress the non-malays. Look at the way universities allocate places to the non-malays. Look at employment ratio in the public sector from A to Z.

It is true that there have been abuses under the name of malay special rights and it is the duty of the malays in particular, and all Malaysians in general, to stop it so that the rightful malays get their rights, and the non-malays get their rights as citizens of this country.

Ninety-six percent of the education budget was spent on national schools while the Chinese and Indians only got 2.44 percent and 1.56 percent respectively. But how much of that 96 percent was taken up by the elites?

Less than three percent of the national budget is spent on the maintenance of all the Chinese new villages in the country from which more than two million people's taxes come from. Indian settlements got even less.

The non-malays know for certain how their contributions are being employed to bail out elite cronies. The amount used to bail out Renong was sufficient to cover the cardiac by-pass operations of more than one million patients (the country only operates on less than 3000 cases a year).

To say that the second-class non-malays are richer than the first-class malays is utter rubbish.

These special privileges and rights were once a necessity for them to move forward. Today, after many decades, they find themselves still standing in the same place.

Anonymous said...

..........schools in the 50s and 60s when terms like bumi and non-bumi did not exist.

Back then, there was a kind of kindred among school children then that does not exist today. We were racially different but we were all equal in every other way. Nobody was 'special'.

Today when a non-malay student goes to school, he has already been told over and over again by his parents that, 'You will have to do superlatively in order to get into a local university'.

The child comes back having done creditably well, and doesn't get the university course of his choice. But his malay classmate, with worse marks than him, gets more than he asked for.

All these double standards and retrogressive policies were put in place by our selfish politicians whose aim, rather than uplifting the malays, was to perpetually stay in power for their own good. The end result is a new generation of Malaysians who are not united in the least.

The first thing to be done towards a real Bangsa Malaysia is to pull down all divisions that categorise us along racial and religious lines.

All, irrespective of race and religion, must be subjected to a truly merit-based system in every sphere of Malaysian life.

All political parties that exploit any form of religion should be banned.

Anonymous said...

The problem with Malaysia ministers is that they are mostly underachievers academically!

That is the reason why they simply speak without logic and reasons. This is also the very reason that I admire Lim Kit Siang, Karpal, etc, who can debate intelligently with those monkeys who never bother to understand what is uttered.

Just compare the resume of Malaysia ministers with that from our southern neighbour! Then you will understand.

I know their prime minister has a first class honors in science from Cambridge if I am not mistaken. The rest of his cabinets are very highly qualified. Hence you don't hear nonsense from them.

For your information, some Malaysia ministers would not be at all qualified for even an assistant post!

Our country leaders, not necessary meaning the prime minister, but overall people in power, people of authority, etc have no integrity, no moral, no self respect and most of no accountability and responsibility.

Let's not compare with other countries, as no countries have perfect leaders, but what they have is integrity.

When they do something wrong and they know it is wrong, nobody need to tell them to resign, they won't say our Malaysia usual line "Nobody can resign me except the prime minister" - we should call this the ball-less line.

If you have integrity and honest enough, you should just resign.

Anonymous said...

China has been doing this for years now to bring in foreign investment. The investments brought in by foreign universities particularly big ones like the current University of Nottingham to Semenyih are huge. Private sectors have much to gain from one project alone.

In China, land would be 'leased' for a long period rather than being 'sold'. But lease or sell, the question is still whether the foreign institutions would WANT to come into Malaysia. China, understandably they'd be scrambling for a chance to set up base there but Malaysia... one would have to ask why.

Anonymous said...

And this woman should have been Malaysia's own too:

http://www.latimes.com/business/careers/work/la-ft-lum5dec05,1,594692.story?coll=la-headlines-business-careers