Doing due diligence: finding educational opportunities

The case of Anucia, which Tony blogged about last month, seems to have struck a chord with you all: there are over 60 comments and counting on the post. Many are critical of Anucia's failure to research the government's requirements for a teaching post. A lot of people seem to have missed the critical point: if we want better teachers, we need to recognise more good universities. That's basically it -- as for what Anucia should do in her personal situation, the answer is fairly obvious: look for a private sector job, be it here or overseas. But what I want to draw more attention to is the important issue of information when it comes to education; there is an immense knowledge gap which often makes a huge difference in where people end up, and not enough people seem to have this in mind.

My father comes from a rural New Village. The fact that he has a PhD from a prestigious foreign university is almost a fluke. He was fortunate that my grandparents earned enough to put him through university overseas; he tried to apply for a government scholarship, but received what he thought was a rejection letter. Looking back, he realises now that he could have gotten a scholarship if he'd tried harder -- and if not for my grandparents' good fortune and hard work, he might not have gone overseas at all.

Tony and Kian Ming both went to Singapore for secondary school -- like many other middle- to upper-class Malaysian students, they escaped our rapidly-deteriorating public school system. But not many Malaysians know about these kinds of opportunities -- I was only vaguely aware of them when I was in school, and I am in a solidly upper-middle-class area. A lot of times, the question of who gets what opportunities is pretty much up to the roll of the dice, because so many people are not in a position to know what opportunities are out there.

In my part of Petaling Jaya, many students from SMK Damansara Jaya and Damansara Utama go on to attend one of the prestigious United World Colleges for pre-university. Are the students at DJ and DU particularly smarter than their peers elsewhere? Not particularly -- it just happens that a few DJ and DU alumni found out about the UWCs, applied there, got in, and then told their juniors about the opportunity. I never even heard of the UWCs until I went to university.

One of my friends, who is now working, applied on a whim to Bates College -- one of the best liberal arts colleges in the US -- because one of her best friends applied there. He applied there because many of his family members went there. Because she applied, her friends applied as well. For several years, the Malaysian population at Bates was almost entirely comprised of this motley crew. There's no particular reason that this should have been the case, except for simple information asymmetry.

If all Malaysians knew about the UWCs, or about American liberal arts colleges, the situation would be quite different, I am certain. But nobody really seems aware of just how important awareness is. Knowing is easily half the battle here -- you can't apply to Harvard if you've never heard of it. You can't get financial aid from a liberal arts college if you don't even know what financial aid is.

One commenter on Tony's post wrote: "I feel that being young (a subjective measure of age) and having parents that are not well-educated (as you have assumed) are not valid factors that contribute to [Anucia's] predicament now." This is flat-out wrong. If Anucia were older when she applied to do her degree, and if she had come from a more educated family background, she would have more information about how the education system works and what sort of opportunities are out there. That's about as straightforward as you can get.

People in urban areas and from upper-income backgrounds often underestimate how much luck can play a role in securing a good education. People from rural areas and from poor backgrounds simply do not have the educational resources or practical experience to make the right decisions, and this is a major reason why so many Malaysians do not get as good an education as they could have. Blame them for their predicaments all you want -- that will not solve the problem.

Too much CSI?

Thanks for Kean Jin for highlighting this letter in Malaysiakini. The letter was written by a student of forensics science who after taking this course in a local public university found that he or she couldn't join the Forensics Department in the Police Force or the Malaysia Chemistry Department.

The English translation of the letter can be found here.
These students, upon graduating, found out that they needed to join the police force before they could be forensics scientists in the police department. But many of them wore glasses and because of this, did not fulfill the eyesight criterion to be a police officer.

These graduates complained that in their opinion, it is not necessary to have good eyesight nor is it necessary to go through training as a police officer to be a forensic scientist.

Furthermore, they also found out that their training as forensic scientists were not sufficient to get them jobs in the Malaysia Chemistry Department (Jabatan Kimia Malaysia).

I have a couple of take away points from this letter.

Firstly, there seems to be a miscommunication between the university authorities who are offering these courses and the potential employers for these graduates (the police and the JKM). Given that there are a limited number of potential employers for the skills of these graduates, it seems clear to me that the university authorities (the department heads, for example) should have had better communication channels with these potential employers as well as with their students.

If this had been the case, they could have tailored their courses better so that these graduates would be more employable or have told potential students of the requirements of the potential employers.

Secondly, if you want to take a more specialized course, it makes sense that you should do some research in advance (asking seniors, checking employer websites) to make sure that you have the criteria to be employed. Forensics science is not accounting and finance or economics which are more generic courses and which allow its graduates a greater amount of flexibility when it comes to employment opportunities.

Thirdly, while I applaud the desire of these students to serve the country by trying to help solve crimes and reduce crime rates, they probably should not have been too influenced by the unrealistic portrayal of forensic scientists in TV shows such as CSI and its many spin offs.

I hope that this example doesn't dissuade our readers from taking 'alternative' career paths which I'm a keen advocate of. But it does show the need for us to do our due diligence before taking up a particular course.