Supremacists nowhere in top 400

The Malaysian Insider - Falling UM standards sign of NEP failure, says Anwar.

Leaving Anwar Ibrahim aside wakakaka, personally I have nothing against educational affirmative actions for bumiputeras. In fact I support its true objectives and genuinely deserved recipients. But it should be affirmative actions that do not lower schools or universities’ standards.

Good affirmative actions should be, for example, providing to genuinely deserving recipients the best possible teachers/lecturers money can employ, extra tuition, top class facilities, perhaps longer terms in the students’ educational courses, good nutritional food, medical care, health support etc.

Instead, our Education authorities don’t believe in doing the hard yards, namely to raise bumiputera standards to world standards, but want results el pronto, even if the results won’t be substantive and only pseudo-achievements, basically handy ‘statistics’ to push around, like for example, University A has graduated 1,001 bumi medical doctors while University B has graduated 2,999 Malay PhDs ... but to what standards(?) and where any questioning of the program would be shouted at as anti-Malay!

How do they go about achieving such pseudo self-cheating results?

By lowering the standards, of course.

Meanwhile, over at the Centre for Policy Initiatives website, Pak Sako wrote about Freeing the Malays and Muslims from religious mind control, where he informed us that the current Malay-Muslim leaders sells the importance of racial and religious supremacy to the Malays-Muslims.

He explained: A set of underlying reasons drive these mentalities. Political motives aside, there is a historical fear of disenfranchisement; a concept of entitlement as an exclusive birthright; envy; low self-esteem; a craving for a source of self-pride; a fear of the new or alien; meekness; and narrow-mindedness.

And he mention the irony that: Supremacism is sold as the cure-all. But it only adds to the problem.

Indeed!

He then showed that far important issues like: Closing the gap with South Korea or Singapore at the top of quality-of-life indicators such as the UN Human Development Index is a minor national concern.

And sarcastically mentioned that those Malay-Muslim leaders leaders (presumably from UMNO): … are prouder to have been ranked by the Pew Forum’s Government Restriction Index alongside Saudi Arabia and Iran as world champions in constricting religious freedoms and other civil rights.

Thus, has it been any wonder that with such self-cheating, no Malaysian university was placed among the top 400 universities listed by The Times Higher Education World University Rankings 2011 -2012?

Alas, according to above TMI article, Higher Education Ministry deputy secretary general Rohani Abdullah in response to the dismal rankings of our tertiary institutions said the things I don’t want to hear, that today Malaysia’s universities are not as highly ranked as other countries as the nation’s priorities do not match that of ranking agencies. She said that Malaysia was still struggling with providing access to higher education which made it a higher priority.

Pathetic excuse!

In fact Pak Sako stated: There is no commensurate effort to unleash the Malay mind and encourage the Malay person to seize the day, excel, question, take charge, propose or dissent. Political leaders and the religious bureaucracy do not favour this; an empowered people puts at stake their political influence and economic privilege.

The outcome is a large class of Malays that is averse to thinking, recoils from taking responsibility and content with following instructions. Ennui, the deep weariness and dissatisfaction stemming from mindless satiety and boredom, is a common affliction.

It is to this oppressive vacuity that the non-Malays are portrayed as ‘threats’.

Now, let’s leave aside universities of mighty Japan, emerging giant China, and technologically advanced South Korea, and look at the small red dot south of us otherwise known as Singapore (population 5 million?) and that pimple on China’s bottom, Hong Kong, yes, an island we used to look down upon (population 7 million, where 0.3 of which are Filipino maids wakakaka).

The Times Higher Education World University Rankings 2011 -2012 indicates that among the top 100 in the World:

• No 34 is University of Hong Kong
• No 40 is Singapore National University
• No 62 is Hong Kong University of Science & Technology

while at its next 100 top universities (ranking No 101 to 200):

• No 151 is Chinese University of Hong Kong
• No 169 is Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University
• No 193 is City University of Hong Kong

Oh boy, that Chinese ‘pimple’ has 4 universities in the top 200, 2 among the top 100 and another 2 in the next 100, while Singapore has 2, one in each succeeding 100 best. Mana universiti-universiti Malaysia?

Next, there is the QS World University Rankings 2011/2012.

QS had previously published the rankings together with The Times as a joint effort from 2004 to 2009, before they ended their collaboration in 2010. QS retained the original ranking methodology while The Times went on to develop a new one.

The following is the QS ranking for 2011/2012:

• No 22 is the University of Hong Kong
• No 28 is University of Singapore
• No 37 is Chinese University of Hong Kong
• No 40 is Hong Kong University of Science & Technology
• No 58 is Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University
• No 110 is City University of Hong Kong
• No 177 is Hong Hong’s Polytechnic University

This time Hong Kong has 5 among the top 200, with 3 among the 100 Best, while that red dot has 2 in the top 100. Mana universiti-universiti Malaysia?

Food for thought – now, who’s supreme?

In the end, Pak Sako proposed a blueprint to: motivate the Malays to take control of the wheels of their destiny. The immediate implications are for the Malays to free themselves from religious programming and assert their authority from the grassroots upward.

The prospect may be scary. But the old way of being led by the nose is destructive. The Malays should no longer remain as feudalistic subjects of the political and religious elite. The elite owe the Malays that dignity.