Just like Harvard?

I couldn't help but laugh when I saw this article in the Star - "Harvard varsity-like campus for Terengganu". I was even more amused when it was reported that 'Mentri Besar Datuk Seri Idris Jusoh said the concept of the centre would be the same as Harvard – just minus the lecturers.'

I wonder if our dear MB has even been to Harvard or if he understands what the concept of a university is. Harvard was a renowned institution of higher learning when there was no such thing as wireless internet access and other modern technologies. Ditto with Cambridge and Oxford. The core of any university is the intellectual output that it produces and where does this output come from? It comes from the academia, the 'lecturers' as our dear MB puts it.

And how about the other things which makes a university a university? Such as students and student activities, libraries, laboratories, sports facilities and so on?

I wonder if he realizes how absurd his statements sound. Imagine building a state of the art 80,000 seater football stadium complete with the latest facilities and saying that "This stadium is the same as Chelsea or Man United - just minus the players".

Our politicians should refrain from such hyperbole. He was talking about something called the "International Training Centre", not even a full fledge university. It is an RM20 million facility which hopes to be a place where 'consultants from management-related industries' will 'conduct lectures', a place to 'mould students to be more skilful', where there will be 'video conferencing facilities to encourage distance learning' and a place 'to conduct courses to upgrade the skills of civil servants'.

Somebody should infrom MB Jusoh that RM20 million isn't sufficient to run a single laboratory in Harvard, much less the whole university.

My guess is that this centre will be another white elephant - underutilized, poorly maintained with many of the state-of-the-art facilities not functioning properly.

And that's certainly not 'just like Harvard'.