tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12123329.post116035780514275744..comments2024-03-21T20:10:28.943+08:00Comments on EDUCATION IN MALAYSIA: How UKM beat out UMUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12123329.post-1160557569509671612006-10-11T17:06:00.000+08:002006-10-11T17:06:00.000+08:00To Better Education for All Malaysians: That's a p...To Better Education for All Malaysians: That's a pretty sucky criteria to judge a university - especially a research university. What happens if a university churns out a high ratio of students who plainly don't care much about their paychecque - I for one am considering joining an NGO after graduation. If a high proportion of graduates from my university takes the same path as me instead of going for a high-paying job or enrolling for postgrad studies - does it mean the quality of education there is bad?<BR/><BR/>If I start a new college devoted to theological studies and this college manage to make several breakthroughs in the research, of say, the Bible - does the fact that my college churns out pretty much mostly low-waged pastors mean that my college is a sucky one? <BR/><BR/>And using starting pay is a notorious bad way of judging quality of education NOT ONLY because not all students go to university for materialistic reasons, but rather it cannot separate what is caused by the education received and what has nothing to do with university education. If University X churns out a high number of entrepeuners who, empathetically, don't have high starting salaries, and that's because University X's curriculum prides itself on entrepeunership - does it mean UX is a bad university?<BR/><BR/>If UMNO opens an elite university only for UMNOputras, with all of them coming out with jobs with astronomical starting pays - does this mean Universiti UMNOputra is a stunning exemplar of tertiary education? And what about universities with low to non-existant entry requirements - is it fair to paint the top students, the average and the downright pitiful with the same brush?Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12123329.post-1160411176663239562006-10-10T00:26:00.000+08:002006-10-10T00:26:00.000+08:00I disagree -- shame on the media, VCs and this sit...I disagree -- shame on the media, VCs and this site for focusing on the THES rankings. We shouldn't follow those league-table-obsessed British (yeah, Oxbridge beats all US unis but Harvard -- ask any well-informed person these days and they'll laugh at that!)<BR/><BR/>If you read press statements by top US universities, they all state that rankings (including the US News US college ranking) give only very partial view of how good a university it (Kian Ming made a good point on that 0.6 absolute difference results in a huge ordinal difference).<BR/><BR/>Instead, we rely on the job market as a barometer for how well our universities are preparing our graduates. We should demand our public unis release information on the percentage of employed grads (after say 3 months), their starting salary data, and also percentage who go on to do postgraduate studies at top universities. These statistics say much more about the quality of a university that any ranking can provide.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com