Budget 2010  is finally out and (predictably), a yawn-fest for many sectors who had been waiting with bated breath. I can't say I'm surprised, given the government's escalating belt-tightening. But hey, that's the scenario with nearly all governments trying to keep their economies afloat in the still-bleak global investment climate. Nevertheless, there are noteworthy "goodies" for those in the education and research community:

For R&D efforts:

- Rationalising all research funds and grants to be more effective to achieve set targets

-A National Innovation Centre supported by a network of innovation excellence centres under the Science, Technology and Innovation Ministry and in collaboration with the Higher Education Ministry

- Integrating R&D activities with patents, copyrights and trademarks registration to ensure R&D&C processes are implemented more effectively.

- Providing small and medium enterprises with tax deduction on expenses incurred in the registration of patents and trademarks in the country.

For schools:

-The government will allocate RM30 billion for primary and secondary education-includes emoluments (RM19 billion), RM2.8 billion for student assistance and scholarship programme, RM1.6 billion for the construction of 80 new schools as well as 1,100 additional blocks and 347 school replacement projects.

-In addition, a sum of RM1.1 billion is provided to refurbish and upgrade schools nationwide, especially in Sabah and Sarawak.

-National Key Result Areas (NKRA) with focus on widening access to quality and affordable education. It aims to ensure the rakyat receives the best education, from foundation to the highest level. For this, focus will be given on four NKRA sub-components, namely:
• Strengthening pre-school education — The government will incorporate pre-school education as part of the mainstream national education system. To date, the participation rate of children 22 between 5 and 6 years old in government and private pre-schools is at 67 per cent. The government aspires to increase the participation rate to 87 per cent by 2012.

To achieve this, all pre-school facilities and curriculum under Kemas and other agencies will be revamped, in line with the policy and standards stipulated by the Ministry of Education Ministry. Private pre-schools are also given the opportunity to participate in this initiative. In addition, the government will establish centralised preschools in existing school premises as well as provide training and courses to government and private pre-school teachers. For this, an allocation of RM48 million will be provided in 2010.

-Increasing literacy and numeracy rate — A number of normal school-going children in primary schools are yet to be proficient in basic literacy and numeracy skills. The government aims to ensure that 100 per cent of all normal school children will master basic literacy and numeracy after three years of schooling. Among the programmes that will be implemented include provision of special modules for students and teachers, student screening according to capabilities as well as special training programmes for teachers. This measure will commence in 2010, involving all Year 1 schoolchildren with an allocation of RM32 million.

- Creating high performance schools — The government will classify identified schools as high performance schools (SBT). SBT will focus on academic excellence, overall students’ achievements, including discipline and cleanliness, curriculum activities as well as competency in schools’ specialisation areas. The government targets 20 schools to be recognised as SBT in 2010 with an allocation of RM20 million.

-For excellent performing schools, the government will introduce the New Deal or Bai’ah as an appreciation of the contribution and performance of principals and head teachers. The government will determine the performance targets that must be achieved, as agreed by principals and head teachers. If the targets are achieved, rewards in the form of monetary and non-monetary incentives, as well as autonomy in school administration will be accorded. However, for those who fail to meet the targets for two consecutive years, necessary action will be taken.

For students, the government will

-Award National Scholarships to 30 crème de la crème students strictly based on merit. These scholarship recipients will further their education in world renowned universities

- Convert the National Higher Education Fund Corporation (PTPTN) loans to scholarships for students who graduate with first class honours degree or equivalent, beginning 2010

- Provide a 50 per cent discount on fares for long-distance services of Keretapi Tanah Melayu Berhad (KTMB) to students aged 13 and above. A complimentary 1Malaysia student discount card can be obtained from KTMB. This discount will commence Jan 1, 2010

- Offer a Netbook package, including free broadband service, to university students for RM50 per month for two years. This package is cheaper than the current market price. Priority will be given to first year students and those from low-income families. For a start, this package will be offered by Telekom Malaysia to 100,000 local university students, effective Jan 1, 2010.

For public higher education institutions

-The government will consider granting IPTA greater autonomy in managing finance, human resources, administration, student intake and income generation. With greater autonomy, for example, Ipta will be allowed to establish subsidiaries to generate revenue. To achieve this objective, the government will consider relaxing rules and regulations, which hinder IPTA from generating their own income.

Malaysia Today's Raja Petra had an interesting post today on the long-forgotten concept of Malaysian Inc. Although I don't always agree with his ways, I can't deny that Raja Petra has a convincing and fact-packed writing style, hence his loyal following. The country needs more high-level thinkers like him who dare to change, the latter quality which is still sorely lacking in our education system. He's named our education system as one of the top ten problems plaguing the nation (i.e. Malaysia Inc):

"What is the top ten? I would say a failing education system, state-endorsed or institutionalised racism, abuse of power, corruption, wastage of public funds, lack of transparency and accountability, attitude problem, no civility or courtesy, serious crime problem, and arrogance, though not necessarily in that order.

Now, if we can attack those top ten items, in particular the top five or six, 80% of the country’s problems will be solved. And many of the other problems will also automatically solve themselves."

Showing similar love for people and progress is The Star's P.Gunasegaran, a well-respected veteran Malaysian journalist who shares his ideas for educational reform in his article "10 Ways to 1 Malaysia":

"Move to a single school system over the long term: Yes, the constitution guarantees vernacular schools. But to continue with this where schoolchildren of various races no longer mingle at work and play as the educational system becomes polarised is extremely unsatisfactory. Some system should be devised where mother-tongue education can continue unabated and at the same levels as now within a unified single school system. This is a major cause of disunity and can be changed if there is consensus.

Abolish racial quotas: Racial quotas are archaic as a means of achieving social distribution aims. The idea should be to help all disadvantaged. If that is done, and if a particular race as a whole is disadvantaged, it will automatically be helped more. That removes the considerable social angst and divisiveness of racial quotas and directly fosters national unity.

Move towards equality of opportunity, not outcome: To do away with a dependence habit and to encourage and reward effort, the aim should be equality of opportunity. All disadvantaged groups can be given some forms of advantage to redress imbalances without bringing into play the question of race.

Award scholarships, university places etc based on need and merit: There are two ways to award places in universities and give scholarships – according to need and according to merit. When poor and disadvantaged groups need to be given a leg up, clear guidelines can be set and adhered to so that the process is transparent, effective and not based on race.

Introduce anti-discriminatory legislation and enforce it scrupulously: No one should be discriminated against anywhere on the basis of race, religion, language or gender. This should be clearly set forth unambiguously in legislation and a commission set up to enforce it. In any country where there are minorities who are citizens, their rights must be scrupulously protected to ensure national unity.

Singapore is shifting its spending from infrastructure to education next year, a sign the export-dependent country fears an economic rebound may not hold without government support, says Reuters.

Wishing all my Hindu readers a happy and prosperous Diwali. May it bring your peace, good fortune and the blessings of the universe.

There's never enough government funds for all schools, and as we all know only too well, partially public-funded vernacular schools are lower down the priority list of an already financially-strapped government . Rather than whine about their state, a couple of Chinese schools in Perak recently mulled the idea of getting into the palm oil game to generate more funds. Yup, you read right: PALM OIL. Their idea didn't quite pan out, but hats off to them all the same for thinking out of the box.

Higher education costs are rising globally, however a good number of international students, Malaysians included, remain undeterred in pursuing a prestigious undergraduate or postgraduate degree in the UK. Have you wondered however, why is it you pay a whole lot more in tuition fees than the "locals"?

Mike Reddin, the 'architect of international student fees tables' , as The Guardian puts it, has the answers.

The Business Mirror ran an article yesterday on a new report by UNESCO, which says that there's an acute shortage of teachers in the Asia Pacific region:

"With over 10 million teachers needed worldwide to reach the United Nations Millennium Development Goal target of reaching universal primary education by 2015, the Southeast Asia and  Pacific region is facing a shortage.

With an estimated prospective shortage of more than 1.1 million teachers, it also faces the corollary problem of funding, recruiting and training this vast number, according to a new report released recently by the Institute for Statistics of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (Unesco)."

According to the Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS) by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, teachers from Malaysia and Brazil spend on average the largest portion of classroom time (18 per cent) dealing with disruptive students, compared to the international average of 13 percent. Read the full article here.

William Leong, the PKR Member of Parliament for Selayang, wrote in The Malaysian Insider today that our country is afflicted with "Dutch Disease" or the "Resource Curse". Here's a snippet of Leong's article:

"Malaysia has exhibited the classical symptoms of the “Dutch Disease” or the “Resource Curse”. The term “Dutch Disease” was coined in 1977 by the Economist to describe the decline of the manufacturing sector in the Netherlands after the discovery of a large natural gas field in 1959, culminating in the world’s biggest public-private partnership, N.V. Nederlandse Gasunie between Esso (now ExxonMobil) Shell and the Dutch government in 1963, only to see the rest of its economy shrinking.

It refers to the paradox that countries with an abundance of natural resources, specifically resources like minerals and fuels, tend to have less economic growth and worse development than countries with fewer natural resources."

Here's what he has to say on human capital and education:

"The oil and gas revenue-driven economic growth lulled Umno and the BN government to misconstrue the importance of maintaining excellence in our education system. This allowed misguided and mismanaged policies to turn our schools and universities into factories churning out unemployed and unemployable graduates.

This has resulted in our nation suffering a severe underperformance of our education standards. Malaysia tertiary enrolment and completion ratio has lagged that of some of our Asian counterparts. At 28.6 per cent and 15 per cent, Malaysia’s gross tertiary enroll ratio and completion ratio are 7 per cent and 6 per cent lower than the average expected of economies with similar level of GDP per capital.

This means Malaysia is having a tertiary skills shortage. This point to Malaysia lacking the necessary skills and knowledge human capital essential to move the Malaysian economy up the value added chain."

..."With the labour force growing, unemployment rate has stayed range bound at around 3 per cent and with the skills shortage, graduates surprisingly continues to make up an increasing proportion of the unemployed group from 15.2 per cent in 2000 to 25.1 per cent in 2007.

The government, in answer to a question I posed in Parliament, gave the following breakdown of unemployed graduates:-

Ethnic breakdown of unemployed graduates in Malaysia Year    Total   Chinese Indian  Malay

2004    4,594   163     207     4,060

2005    2,413   31      70      2,186

2006    56,750  1,110   1,346   50,594

2007    56,322  1,348   1,401   49,075

2008 (until June)    47,910  1,403   4,694   41,813 Source: Ministry of Human Resources

[Editor’s note: The figures above refer to graduates who registered with the Human Resources Ministry to find jobs. Compared with Malay graduates, Chinese and Indians may prefer to use job recruitment services from the private sector.]

The predominance of Malay unemployed graduates who are overwhelmingly from public universities suggests that we have a problem of graduate skills mismatch.

Singapore in comparison has its universities design their curriculum in collaboration with the industry players. The majority of the students are offered jobs before they graduate and 82 per cent are employed within three months of their graduation."

Not a pretty sight is it?

Dr. Lim Teck Ghee of the  Centre For Policy Initiatives has written a thought-provoking article on the NEP's effect on the state of public higher education. With the recent complaints I've heard from peers in public unis whose rankings fell in the Times-QS 2009 rankings, I didn't bat an eye at the stats on unemployed graduates.

When my foreign peers try to make sense of the pro-majority quota system in place, I explain to them it's like when South Africa used to bar coloured people from restaurants and schools that white people went to, the 'white schools' were given the best of everything while the coloured students were denied similar benefits. As a result, the white kids grew into smarter and richer adults and the education-income gap between the coloreds and whites widened considerably.

Then I tell my friends to picture the same thing about Malaysia, except that the quota system here doesn't really care about making the majority race into excellent students or a superior workforce. So not only is the majority depriving their superior race of competing on the world stage, they are actually instilling even more resilience and determination in the denied minorities to outperform the majority.

The US has long abolished such race-based policies, and so has South Africa, once notorious for its apartheid system. Why? Because this race-based system doesn't work. When every other nation is harnessing its homegrown talent collectively and not by to race or class, what chance do countries with a 'weak link' like ours have to shine? How ironic it is that our ancestors banded together to fight domination from one race and that we now perpetuate a similarly unjust supremacy.

I still remember the tears in the eyes of a friend who grew up in South Africa being forced to learn Afrikaans in schools and not being allowed in certain restaurants, having separate restrooms from the white kids in school. Those years are long gone for my friend, but in the 21st century, right here in Malaysia, we still have universities who are exclusively for a certain religion or race.

Update: An interesting letter to Malaysiakini on this thorny issue.

O' Reilly Radar has a compelling post about educational programming today:

"Our public broadcasting system should re-invent itself as a network for educational programming. Moreover, it should specifically focus on increasing public interest and engagement in science and civics. This is a vital public mission -- promoting science and technology literacy and creating a greater understanding of our own system of government.

Even in an age of YouTube, broadcast television has the ability to reach even those people who don't have ready access to the Internet. Television is a lowest common denominator, technologically speaking, and so it serves nearly everyone. That's why we should still care that some portion of broadcasting be allocated to serving a public good."

It struck me that educational programming the kind that actually involves educators is doable here in Malaysia, given the recent lament about our shortfall of scientists. The only questions left are "who", "how" and of course, "how much"?

University Malaya shot up 50 places to bag the 180th spot on this year's Times Higher Education (THE) – QS World University Rankings, says today's edition of The Star. Universiti Teknologi Malaysia jumped to the 320th spot from 356 last year. However, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, Universiti Sains Malaysia and Universiti Putra Malaysia saw a decline in their rankings.

Good job, UM! Hope you edge us into the top 100 next year.

Read the full story here.

Update: The Times Online writes:

"...improved showings by institutions in Japan, Hong Kong, South Korea and Malaysia.

Philip Altbach, director of the Centre for Higher Education at Boston College in the US, says several factors are behind the surges by Asian institutions.

"These countries have invested heavily in higher education in recent years, and this is reflected in the improved quality in their top institutions," he says. "They have also attempted to internationalise their universities by hiring more faculty from overseas ... this helps to improve their visibility globally."

"These universities have also stressed the importance of their professors publishing in international journals, which has no doubt increased the visibility of their research."

Meanwhile, UM VC Professor Datuk Dr Ghauth Jasmon told The Malaysian Insider that local universities need to spend a minimum of RM200 million in research to be among the top universities in the world. Click here to read the story.

The National University of Singapore has invited Yale to help plan a new liberal arts college in the island nation, according to Yale Daily News. According to the article, Yale administrators say the US university may partner with NUS to jointly open a campus in Singapore, however nothing has been decided.

According to a recent Swedish study, a woman with a university education can positively influence her and her partner's chances of a long life, says the BBC:

"A man whose partner had only a school education has a 25% greater risk of dying early than if she had had a university education, it suggests.

The authors say educated women may be more likely to understand the various health messages their families needed."

Read the whole article here.

Deputy Prime Minister and Education Minister Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin yesterday reiterated the government's commitment to education. I'm not sure I agree with his comparisons, given that we should be benchmarking to global standards, but he appears well-meaning and willing to listen to the people.

Budget 2010 is just around the corner and to date, there has been plenty said in news websites and blogs about personal income tax cuts, new incentives for businesses and even incentives for tertiary education institutions. Yet incentives for individuals pursuing an education or whose children are being educated are still lacking and I fervently hope at least one of these areas will be addressed in the upcoming budget.

My Budget 2010 wish list

1) Income tax deductions for taxpayers who are currently repaying student loans from government agencies/institutions (e.g. PTPTN, MARA, JPA, etc) and other qualified student loans approved by the LHDN and MOHE. Deductions should be made available to individual taxpayers within a specified income bracket, to reduce the burden of  paying for their education.

It sure beats barring errant loan payers from leaving the country, positive reinforcement often works on adults the same way it did when they were teens or children.

2) Higher tax deductions for working adults pursuing their post-graduate degrees. And how about widening the scope of degrees to include the arts, that way the government can also address the shortage of qualified teachers for instance.

What's available now: RM5,000 tax relief for post-graduate degrees in the fields of law, accounting, Islamic financing, technical, vocational,  industrial, science or technology. With Masters degrees in science and technology at local private universities costing some RM60,000 in tuition fees alone, RM5,000 is simply not enough. With the economy as it is, salary hikes and promotions are scarce, RM10,000 would be a more reasonable amount.

3) Special tax relief for parents who have children with special needs but can't afford to send them to special centres and therapy.

Other tax reliefs currently available to individual taxpayers:

A maximum of RM3,000 tax relief for your child's education insurance policy
A maximum of RM3,000 under the Skim Simpanan Pendidikan Nasional programme
A maximum of RM1,000 for book purchases

Speaking of books, the government may want to consider giving special tax incentives to bookstore chains and book distributors who slash prices on education-related books and textbooks for primary, secondary and tertiary-age students.Books are still far too expensive and inaccessible to the masses.After all, how many lower-income Malaysians can afford to shelve out RM1,000 a year to buy books, especially when they may not even be taxable?

In the spirit of Budget 2010, I've designed a  poll for the more edu-centric amongst us:

[polldaddy poll=2078647]

The Sun Daily said today that the government has made it compulsory for all 469 private colleges in the country to take the Establishment Audit (EA) with immediate effect. More here.

Today's edition of NST Online has an article on the current state of things in Malaysia's  national schools. The suggestions mooted by activists from the Parent Action Group for Education (Page) are not new. Still, I did notice  a few key takeaways worth highlighting:

• National schools that want to keep teaching Mathematics and Science in English should be allowed to do so.


• The ministry needs to divorce politics from education and stand firm on policies.


• Make it compulsory for students in national schools to take a third language.


• The ministry should hire more language teachers.


• Review the way teachers are trained at colleges and universities.


• The ministry should  introduce a policy making it compulsory for schools to celebrate all key cultural and religious festivals

Hopefully it won't take a miracle or act of God for the ministry to act on at least one of the above suggestions.

According to today's The Star Online, the Ministry of Higher Education has come up with some new ideas to motivate private IPTs (tertiary learning institutions) . Among the proposals that have been put forward:

• Investment Tax Allowances (ITA) for private IPTs which offer more Science and Technology programmes to achieve a 60:40 ratio.


• The ITA will be extended to encourage private IPTs to offer these programmes at competitive fees, attracting local and international students alike.


• To encourage private IPTs to upgrade their infrastructure and facilities, the ministry will propose that Industrial Building Allowance (IBA) be increased from 10% to 15%.


• Double deductions on tax exemptions for sponsoring their staff to pursue postgraduate studies and on for fees paid in acquiring full accreditation from the Malaysian Qualifications Agency (MQA).


• To promote the use of ICT, a 50% reduction on software license fees and tax exemptions for online journal subscriptions and broadband services.


• Tax exemptions on income for private IPTs whose international student cohort comprise at least 40% of their total enrolment.”

Read the rest of the article here.