JPA Scholarships – Seeking A Fair & Equitable Policy

Read about all the renewed controversy over the JPA scholarships recently? Check out Kian Ming's latest take (of our many takes).

Well, in the light of the neverending controversy over the award of government scholarships by Jabatan Perkhidmatan Awam (JPA) of the Prime Minister's Department, DAP will be holding a forum/dialogue session to obtain feedback from:

• aggrieved students
• current and former local and overseas scholars
• academics
• the general public

The forum/dialogue will be held as follows:

JPA Scholarships – Seeking A Fair & Equitable Policy
Venue: KL & Selangor Chinese Assembly Hall
Date: 19th May 2009 (Tuesday)
Time: 8.00 pm

The panelists will include:

• Lim Kit Siang, DAP Parliamentary Leader and MP for Ipoh Timor,
• Anthony Loke Siew Fook, MP for Rasah and DAPSY Chief,
• Tony Pua, MP for Petaling Jaya Utara,
• Dr Dzulkifli Ahmad, PAS Research Centre Director and MP for Kuala Selangor
• Nik Nazmi Nik Ahmad, Selangor ADUN for Seri Setia

Dr Goh Cheng Teik, eminent academic, former deputy minister and interviewer for Harvard University admission programme in Malaysia will also be a special guest for the evening.

In addition, for students and scholars who are not able to make it for the forum (e.g., if you are overseas or if you live outstation, you are welcome to submit written submissions to the panel. Please write to: dapscholarship (at) rocketmail (dot) com.

Please forward details of the above forum to all parties concerned, especially those who have failed to secure scholarships despite outstanding results. We will be making a compilation of the complaints, appeals and suggestions made during the evening.

Meritocracy examined

Just wanted to point our readers to an insightful analysis done by 'unwanted citizen', someone who's clearly in the know about the medical faculty and intake at University Malaya (UM). My conclusion from his analysis is this - there has been a more transparent implementation of meritocracy, meaning that those students who perform well in STPM AND Matriculation, are getting into the medical program at UM. The clear losers from this are the bumiputeras from Sabah and Sarawak.

Of Meritocracy & Top Universities...

There were small snippets of news in the last week with regards to higher education in Malaysia. Firstly, the Ministry of Higher Education announced that it will only "hire the best" for the 20 Malaysian public universities. And secondly, the Minister, Datuk Mustapa Mohamed also announced separately that 1,800 overseas Public Service Department scholarships, 300 more than the previous years, will only be made available to students who obtained places in "renown foreign universities".

Both pieces of news are not new. In fact, I've blogged on the latter here.

While I certainly welcome both "announcements", what appears sorely lacking in the news reports are the details of its implementation. As highlighted many times on this blog, the success or failure of our 'noble' policies lies pretty much in their implementation (or lack of).

In trying to "hire the best" for the local public universities - how will the Ministry or the local university administration approach the delicate issues as to how the "best" is decided?

For example, I'm personally aware of an extremely experienced returning academic overseas who was offered a position by a senior academic at Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM). However, the offer was apparently vetoed without any reasons given by the "higher ups" (whoever they may be). One man's loss is certainly another's gain, for he is now working in Institute of Southeast Asian Studies (ISEAS) of National University of Singapore (NUS).

Will underperforming deans of local faculties be keen to hire talented academics who might threaten his or her position in the university for example? This is without even taking into consideration the politics of pay and research funds, or for that matter, the issues of racial discrimination in the universities.

Similarly with regards to the scholarship application to "renown foreign universities" - which exactly are these universities? Wouldn't the current crop of students seeking these scholarships require the relevant information in order to prepare the applications to the 'right' universities? How big is the pool of "renown" universities and who decides on this pool? Is Iowa State University included? Or is it restricted to purely the Top 100 in any of the popular global university ranking tables?

Tok Pa, it's good to hear that you are (or at least appear to be) doing the right things - at the very least, it's good for press write ups. However, with no accompanying details to the relevant policies, the announcements are really as good as idle chatter. We certainly hope to hear more (hopefully positive) details on the proposed policies.