Sunday, November 11, 2007

Of Local Varsities and Rankings

The ranking of our local universities dropped again?
I m indeed very disappointed with it…
Our prime Uni, which was once ranked amongst the top 100, is now placed at over 200th (246 to be precise).
The ‘dropping scene’ is also much felt in our neighboring country (NUS for example). But well, theirs is still ranked below 100.
What had happened to our local varsities? For sure, there is something lacking...
Besides the quality of the infrastructures, our undergrads are just not up to par with the international standards.
The most obvious one is the lack of critical thinking. These under grads are so exam-based. When it comes to exam, most of them will just pour out whatever they have memorized from their notes, like what they have practiced throughout their schooling days in secondary school. Well, I m not sure about the rest, but this was from my personal experience some 3 years back.
Apart from that, it is a shame that most local undergrads can’t even communicate in English properly. It took them a huge effort to even string a sentence.
Well, that’s fine with them, coz these undergrads are the product of National schools (Sekolah Kebangsaan) which uses Malay language as the medium in their syllabus.
Frankly speaking, I was also one of them, though I've tried to improve over the years. I admit that I m not much better than them too.
To educate the younger generations, we should at least cultivate them from young. Otherwise, we will get what we have as of today – Undergrads with lousy grasp of English. And I strongly oppose the suggestion of some UMNO members to revert back to Malay language in Science and Mathematics subject, just because students from rural area unable to catch up.
Totally ridiculous!
They are using such a stupid excuse to escape from using English, by taking one step backward…thus, demolishing our hopes towards the younger generations.
If we continue to be in our comfort zone, we will no longer be able to catch up globally. Agree?

5 comments:

John A Hill said...

It's hard for me to be objective about this post since in the USA most people speak ONLY English.

You, however, have communicated your strong feelings quite well.

By the way, thanks for the listing in your cool blogs section!

Nux V said...

hi John, nice to see u again at this blog ;P
and thanks for complimenting!

3POINT8 said...

Yea, I've seen the top 200 uni list! Most top 30 uni are dominated by US and UK uni. (But my uni is still in the top50 list. Ego Ego~~~)

Anyway, I agree with you! Msian uni are too exam-based. I wonder if those graduates do learn anything useful from their education.

Yup, msia should cultivate learning and critical thinking since young! But then, i don't think its something easy to do since msia has this culture of 'respect your elders'. It's like saying 'what your teacher taught is the absolute truth! Do not challenge them!'
So, its kinda impossible to cultivate critical thinking with that kind of mentality!

Nux V said...

eh egonya....anyway, it's good for u. Some companies do really look at ur uni before hiring u.
'Respecting the elder' culture is widely practised in most eastern countries too, but weird enuff, they're still able to produce critical-thinking grads, take for example Japan. I wonder how they do it..

jam said...

Do you believe that they actually blame the change in rating system. What a shame! That's why we never improve!

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