Budget 2007 (III): Quantity vs Quality

This is the third instalment of my analysis of the Budget recently announced by the Prime Minister recently. The first covered the outline of the Budget relating to the education sector, whilst the second was an assessment of the impact of the allocation on the respective ethnic groups in the country. This third of five instalments will cover Malaysia's persistent emphasis on quantity at the expense of quality in the education sector.

It has been announced in the Prime Minister's budget speech that The Government will establish Universiti Darul Iman Malaysia in Terengganu and Universiti Darul Naim in Kelantan, as well as upgrade Akademi Tentera Malaysia (Military Academy of Malaysia) into Universiti Pertahanan Nasional Malaysia (National Defence University of Malaysia).

Very simply, that brings the total number of public universities and university colleges to 19. As it stands, we also have a total of 22 private universities and university colleges to date. This number hasn't yet included the new colleges which will be granted university college status this year. This means that the nation has at least 41 university and university colleges not including tens of institutions offering degree programmes in partnership with foreign universities serving a population of 26.4 million. That works out to a ratio of approximately 644,000 to each university.

On the other hand, our neighbour with significantly higher standards in education measured by all indicators except for that produced by the Selangor Menteri Besar, possesses only 3 universities in total serving the population of 4 million. This works out to a ratio of 1.33 million per university.

As earlier highlighted in this blog, that essentially means that we have more than double the number of universities relative to Singapore.

With only 3 universities, Singapore has 2 universities in the Top 50 and Top 200 of the THES and Shanghai Jiaotung University global rankings table respectively. Singapore Management University (SMU), being relatively new, is understandably omitted from the rankings. On the other hand, Malaysia which has more than 40 universities, has none in the top 150 and the top 500 of the respective rankings table (See post on "Latest Global University Rankings").

If this does not represent a clear emphasis for quantity over quality, I'm not sure what other evidence can be used to demonstrate otherwise.

In addition, it is of greater importance for countries like Malaysia to utilise its limited resources to fully exploit the potentials of its younger generation in order to significantly raise productivity and innovation in the future. As it stands because of the number of institutions the Government will have to support, the already precious and limited funds are distributed across way too many institutions.

Although the Singapore education budget is in absolute terms, smaller than that in Malaysia – S$6.16 billion (RM14.2b), it spends S$1.24 billion (RM2.86b) on its 3 universities. National University of Singapore (NUS) itself receives some S$700.7 million (RM1.65b) from the Government. Comparatively, Malaysia's premier university, Universiti Malaya (UM) receives support of only [RM will provide exact figure later] million from the Malaysian Government. It is not surprising then that NUS can pride itself to be a true world-class university, attracting the top students and academics of the world and produces some of the globally recognised top class analysis and research globally. UM on the other hand, had to rely on paying to take part in dog and pony trade shows to collect meaningless coloured medals.

The fact that the government has only allocated RM195 million to “upgrade and improve the facilities” of the existing 16 or so universities and university colleges, averaging only RM12.2 million per institution, indicates how our funds our being stretched unnecessarily by the quantity of institutions.

As a result, the only possible outcome from the policy which emphasized on quantity at the expense of quality, is the production of many (note: not all) local graduates who are not sufficiently equipped with communication, critical thinking and analytical skills. It is hence unsurprising that the Government has to make itself the dump for the unemployable graduates.

While admittedly, the quantity policy is one which is difficult to reverse, it is important for the Government to demonstrate its political will to reverse the trend, even if its baby steps, to show that it is recognising that its policy has resulted in creating degree factories producing many substandard products.