Singaporeans Smarter Than Malaysians?

Are Singaporean students smarther than their Malaysian counterparts?

When I take a look at the top universities in the world, Singapore students outnumber Malaysian students by far. When I was at Oxford (that's some 14 years back!), there was probably literally a handful of Malaysian undergraduates enrolling each year (I understand that there are more today). On the other hand, in my year, there are some 15-20 scholars from Singapore's top junior colleges. While the number of Malaysian undergraduates at Cambridge is significantly higher than that at Oxford, similarly, Singaporeans still outnumber Malaysians. When you look at the top US universities - whether Ivy League such as MIT or Harvard or top liberal arts colleges, once again, Singaporeans will outnumber Malaysians. [Readers, feel free to correct me if my perception is wrong]

Why is this so? There is no logical reason I can think of, to assume that student quality and talent in Malaysia should be less than that in Singapore. Even if the percentage of equivalent talent in Malaysia is lower given the differences in affluence between the 2 countries, the actual quantity of "top talent" should be higher simply due to Malaysia's 6-times larger student population!

So, are Singaporeans necessarily smarter than Malaysians? No way!

The difference is, the Singapore education system provides a formal guided structure to ensure that their top students receives top quality education from the top universities worldwide. In Malaysia, there is just a total absence of such formal guidance. Students today are largely guided by deceving marketing collaterals and advertisements, hearsay from family and and sometimes equally ignorant friends (which may or may not be accurate) and individual resourcefulness.

When I was doing my 'A' Levels in Singapore at one of the top junior colleges (JCs), I was constantly exposed to little events which highlighted the attractiveness of the top schools in the United Kingdom (UK) and United States (US). These JCs will often run specials programmes and classes to prepare students for the necessary entry requirements and examinations to join the elite universities. Top students are identified and are individually counselled to ensure that they apply for universities which meet their needs and interests. In some cases, the JCs actually monitor the number of applications to each college or university to ensure the highest probability of acceptance (instead of say, everyone applying to one particular college).

My route to Oxford wasn't through one of these programmes, but I was strongly influenced by the information made available. I'm pretty certain that I would not have experienced such an environment in Malaysian national schools which encourage the exploration of opportunities at these top universities.

The Ministry of Education needs to seriously relook at where and how our talents are allocated to. Where are we actually sending our "scholars"? While we clearly have a more complex education system partly due to the number of students and the size of the country which makes it harder to manage, there's clearly more the Ministry can do to ensure the right set of information is propagated to the top Malaysian students so that they will make the best choice for their future.

However, to depend on our civil service to deliver prompt and quality actions to immediately remedy the situation is clearly wishful thinking. This point actually leads to another idea which I'm contemplating, which will create possibly a private sector initiative to make up for the shortfall of our Ministry's initiatives (or the lack of it). I will blog this "idea" of mine next.