USA For Students , a US Education Fair would be held this Saturday, 14th June 10am to 4pm at Wisma MCA.
This event is co-organized by US Embassy, MACEE, American Universities Alumni Malaysia and Discover US Education - KL.
This is the 3rd year such a US Education fair is held in Malaysia, and this year, there will be 51 top US Universities, including Harvard, Princeton, MIT, Stanford etc. A series of seminars would be held too, covering topics from US Education System, Visa, Applications for undergrad and postgrad, interviews, job prospect after graduation etc.
Do check it out at USA For Students !
5 comments:
a contrary view:
Against world class universities
By chris dillow
Does Britain need world class universities? I’m prompted to ask by a begging letter from my alma mater.
Intuition says we do. But one big fact argues otherwise. Western continental Europe barely has a university worth the name, and yet the Dutch. Swedes, Germans and Swiss are not obviously poorer, less cultured or worse governed than we British.
Four things might offset the obvious merits of top class universities:
1. A great university needn’t be a great place for undergraduates to learn. If world-renowned professors delegate teaching to their graduate students, undergrads might - with many exceptions of course - get worse teachers than at a “second rate” university where the lecturers are experienced and enthusiastic.
2. Top universities can attract the best minds into academe and away from where they can have more influence. It was a common complaint until the 1980s that the UK’s poor economic performance was in part due to our managers being duffers because the best brains went into the public sector. The demise of academia as a career option seems to have ameliorated this concern.
The problem here, though, isn’t a narrow economic one. It’s possible that a great university, by attracting the best talent, can produce intellectual and cultural deserts elsewhere.
3. In a globalized world, we don’t need cutting edge ideas on our doorstep; we can get them from anywhere. All we need are sufficient brains to understand what the guys at MIT and Harvard are on about.
4. Top universities act as signalling devices. The mere act of walking through the door at Yale or Oxford gives you a licence to print money if you have an ounce of wit - which, I’ll concede, is a big if. And this can exacerbate inequality. Is it really a coincidence that the nations with disproportionate numbers of great universities - the UK and US - are more unequal societies than those with disproportionately few?
Now, I’m not arguing here that we should deliberately aim to weaken our great universities - though this does seem to have been the settled policy of all governments since Thatcher. I’m just wondering whether they are the national asset their champions like to pretend.
Tony, Thanks a lot for helping us publicize!
It is good that the American Universities are doing another road show here. But would there be enough students that are genuine in going over there to study? The statistics already shows that there are less Malaysians now going over to USA to study - more heading to UK, Australia and NZ.
There must be a reason why. With the fuel issue here, i think more parents are worried on how to survive on the mere small wages. The universities on the road show here should provide sincere financial assistance to needy students (but then again, there would be the brain drain issue coming from that).
Just thinking aloud.
We are fairly receptive to road shows by American, Australian, British (Europe in fact), New Zealand Universities to recruit our students.
But if Singapore, Thailand, Indonesia does anything like that, there will be protests about talent poaching. Why are we so discriminating against our own neighbours but forgiving towards those from afar?
If you think of Bush with his accumen accumulated from Harvard, and Bernanke from Harvard, Stanford and Princeton. Wow we are now suffering from an worldwide depression, war, destruction, food shortage, inflation and so on and so on. Thanks to these prestigious institutiions that churn our characters like these.
Further, I read of a Malaysian who sought a job with the civil service but was forced to go to Iraq even though he was a devout Buddhist. Go and work in the USA you just might be in the front line.
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