DAP calls for a full revamp of the education system to face the Malaysian crisis of national competitiveness in the era of globalisation

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Media Statement
by Lim Kit Siang

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• The concern expressed by former Deputy Prime Minister and Education Minister, Tan Sri Musa Hitam, at a meeting on development and education in London last Friday  over the proliferation of “kampung type” universities in almost every state - state-owned universities with the image of being “traditional, left-behind and neglected”.
• The big drop in the number of foreign students enrolled in local private educational institutions due to stiff competition from Thailand and the Philippines - falling from 15,003 in 2000 to 10,443 last year.
• The Education Minister, Tan Sri Musa Mohamad dismissing alarm that Singapore had been  headhunting bright pupils in Malaysian schools, claiming complacently that the matter had been going on for a long time but it had yet to “become a big problem”.
• Call for a revamp of the national education system by local academics and educationists after the revelation by   the University Malaya Vice Chancellor Prof Datuk Dr. Anuar Zaini that local undergraduates lack resourcefulness, raising the question whether the system is able to meet the challenges especially in the era of globalisation.

Malaysia was ranked a lowly seventh out of  12  Asian countries in a survey published last September  by the Hong Kong-based Political and Economic Risk Consultancy (PERC), which found that  foreign business executives in the region rate  Japan, Singapore and South Korea as having  the best education system in Asia and the highest quality labour force.

The Malaysian national education system is facing a  crisis in the face of the challenges of globalisation. The PERC survey should have been a wake-up call to  the Cabinet and Parliament about the urgent need to revamp the national education system to fulfil the  government’s oft-repeated objective to make the country the regional centre of academic excellence - but it did not have any such effect.

The present national education system is clearly not in tune with the needs of a  K-economy,  as it  does not give the highest priority to talents, creativity, skills and innovation but only interested in  quantity and not quality of higher education in the country.

The planners and implementors of the national education system should wake up to the reality that in the new knowledge economy, human capital is more important than physical capital and that the quality of knowledge generated within our  higher education institutions is  becoming increasingly critical to our national competitiveness.

Enrolment in tertiary education in Malaysia is comparatively low. In 1999,  only 21.4 per cent of the youths in the 17-23  age cohort continued education to the higher level, as compared to  the enrolment rate which was as high as 45 per cent for Ireland and 35 per cent for the United Kingdom.

In the revamped national education system, there must be full recognition not only of  the right of every Malaysian to tertiary education, but to quality tertiary education as well.

Higher education should  no longer be regarded as a luxury but essential to national social and economic development.  This is because participation in the knowledge economy requires a new set of human skills.

People need to have higher qualifications and to be  capable of greater intellectual independence.  Without improved human capital, countries will inevitably fall behind and experience intellectual and economic marginalisation.

DAP calls for a full revamp of the national education system to face the Malaysian crisis of national competitiveness in the era of globalisation with the two-prong objective to improve the national  human capital by creating a quality higher-education system and achieve the highest-possible rate of attainment of the work force in tertiary education.

(4/2/2002)