As Dr. Alex (here and here) and the Reb (here) were posting about their thoughts on seminary education, and generating lots of comments, Joshua wrote a comment in my blog about how our local education system are "governed by immediate pragmatic gains" instead of being far-sighted.
I don't exactly know what that means, but I sense that if it means that our schools and universities are only focusing on courses which give practical skills for industry-related work, I must disagree with that. Of course, Joshua could be saying, our system is too short-sighted to invest in advance knowledge and development.
All of our discussions, including that of Dr. Alex and the Reb seemed to agree that there's a problem in our education system. This awareness is so much so that my previous sentence has become some sort of a cliche.
As someone from the manufacturing industry, with a vantage point of leading a group of colleagues, a mixture of graduates and non-graduates, I believe our education system have failed miserably to cater for the skill needed for the industry. Ever since my university days, I have come to believe that perhaps 90% of us should not waste our time doing what we are doing, the so called and overrated Bachelor degrees. We are wasting three to four, some up to six years of our time studying subjects which will probably be outdated when we graduate. And because of the way our university schooling schedules were drawn up, most of the students will end up having no time to explore elsewhere for knowledge and skills.
The straightjacket (I always remember this precious term which the very smart Dean of my faculty referred her lecturers as) sort of exams which university students faced, where memorizing the correct answers are preferred to risk-taking and creativity cannot produce valuable human resources who will take the industry to the next level. We may end up being second fiddle leaders and even that only in our own kampung as jaguh kampungs would be and not be able to be the real global leaders of any industry (think Bill Gates, Michael Dell or more recently the brilliantly young Mark Zuckerberg - google him if you don't know).
Of course, some will say i do not prefer my doctors or engineers to be creative when it comes to life-critical areas. But we are not talking about not getting the facts correct, rather, in the local universities, and i believe local private colleges, there are just no avenues to sharpen, enhance and express the creativity needed to further develop knowledge and technologies, whether in the areas of medicine or engineering or anything else.
I remember that in my university, the situation was so bad that it was not memorizing the correct answers, but rather the correct questions! Past year questions were churned out again and again even during major exams (as was the case in the major public exams in Malaysia), so that students can rely on getting the past years' exam questions to "spot" the questions for this year. Is this an issue of lecturers themselves having their creative juice all dried up? Or was there a delibrate attempt to lower the bar and make university education substandard so that the good statistics churned on grades will give an impression of excellence? I have heard no few educators shamefully (though some shamelessly) acknowledging the latter.
Being in such a system, we cannot expect our students and our graduates to be ably equipped. I have seen graduates (and mind you, not the proverbial "slow" bumiputera graduates) at work and how very pitiful the quality of their work, even after a year on the job. The obvious weaknesses are slow to learn, lack of sharpness and creativity, lack of problem solving skills, low in communication and negotiation skill, lack of self motivation. And most of the time, I cannot help but to sympathize with the fellow because I understand how the expectation of the society and the industry on a graduate has overwhelmly exceeded the standard of the education he or she received at univeristy level.
My own proposal is that instead of a three year university Bachelor degree courses to everyone - the government must bear in mind that it is pointless to flaunt the quantity of degree holders if we are lacking in quality - an appropriate majority should be channelled into special technical universities, where the course will take only two years the most, and if two years, at least half a year in industrial trainings.
The courses should focus on three types of lessons, 1) critical thinking and communication skills which basically provides us with skills to not only think but to acquire knowledge. This is like a teaching the students "how to fish" skill. 2) introductory courses on the fields students chose to major in, to give an overarching idea of the field the students will step into on graduation, 3) semi-advance level courses focusing on uptodate industry's need, the syllabus must be drawn up in collaboration with the HR depts of major industrial players and lecturers can also be roped in from the senior executives of the industry. "Semi" advance because while we want to ensure our students have acquire a good depth of knowledge and skill, we do not want to waste time in giving the unnecssary "extras" which she probably do not need when working.
The reason why I propose the first part of the technical university lesson, i.e. critical thinking, communication skill and knowledge acquiring skill, was so that our graduates will be self sufficient to pursue further learnings by themselves. What we need to give the graduates are self confident to be initiated into the industry; i.e. with sufficient knowledge to be able to kick off his or her job.
That way, most of us can take a one and a half year or two the most off to these technical universities and then be on our way to make a living. Why must we spend three to four years slaving through unnecessary syllabus and ended up loosing a few years worth of opportunities to develop our career?
The rest of the intellectual type can pursue further into Bachelor degree and upto postgraduate levels. These must be given insentives through generous government and industrial grants because their further studies and research can be tapped into application later.
Someone commented that companies and employers today are looking for "paper qualifications". I do not think that is true most of the time. I have spoken to quite a number of managers responsible for hiring, because of the situation in Malaysia, where everyone have a Bachelor degree and without the values to be able to perform in the industry, making the degree as good as an O level certificate, a manager will be quite happy to hire someone short of the "relevant" qualification but are deemed able to perform well in the job.
And to think about it, if our technical universities are producing able graduates, then their certification will be valuable for employers as well. Why must the government spend extra millions in "graduate retraining programs" when the so called value added skills in those programs can be implemented in the technical universities' syllabus.
I think I have written about this somewhere sometimes ago, I forgot where the post is now, but I believe unless and until the issue is resolved, we cannnot say enough, there is a problem in our education system and the cliche remains, hopefully as assertive as ever, we need to do something about it.
