We need to overhaul the whole system and not just tinker with certain parts

by Molly Lee

The Idea of Quality

When I was asked to write a piece on the quality of education in Malaysia, my thoughts immediately swung to private higher education, an area of research that I have been working on for the past ten years. The quality of private colleges has always been an issue to students, parents, Ministry of Education officials, and employers. But what do we mean by the quality of education? It can mean different things to different people. To the students, it may mean �Can I follow the lessons?� or �Are the lessons interesting?� and to the parents it may be �how long is the programme?�, �how much does it cost?� and �would my child find a job after the programme?�. The Ministry officials would ask questions like �Does the programme meet all the National Accreditation Board�s (commonly known as LAN) requirements?� �Does the college possess the required facilities and appropriate teaching staff?� The concerns of employers would include �can the graduate do the job?� and �how much do I have to pay him or her?� There is yet another group of people who are also concerned about the quality of the programme and these are the faculty members of other universities, particularly foreign partner universities that will be receiving the students in the later part of their study in twinning programmes, credit transfer programmes or even post-graduate studies. In short, different stakeholders use different critieria to measure the quality of education.

The idea of quality may be a contested concept but there should be a philosophical view on quality in higher education. What are the qualities that are inherent in the educative process? What do we hope our students will achieve after going through our education system? A very fundamental goal of education is to help an individual to develop his or her full potential. In the context of higher education, this developmental approach is aimed at helping students to develop their intellectual, physical, and interpersonal abilities, and attain intellectual and personal maturity. The quality of higher education can be demonstrated in the nature of the intellectual development that takes place in the students� minds, in the depth and breadth of understanding that students achieve, in their ability to be self-critical, and in their capacity to think for themselves so as to be able to stand on their own feet. Students should also develop integrity and be more socially aware and responsible. The question is what is the quality of Malaysian education?

Quality of Private Higher Education

In general, the quality of private higher education does vary from college to college and from programme to programme. Today there are more than 600 private colleges offering all kinds of programmes ranging from pre-university level to post-graduate level and the private education industry is highly competitive in terms of demand and supply. On the demand side, higher education is no longer a luxury item. With the increasing importance placed on paper qualifications, a post-secondary credential is becoming more like an essential item in modern living. Parents would want their children to obtain some kind of post-secondary qualifications by all means. If they cannot get admission to a reputable university or cannot afford the more expensive programme, they would be quite happy to go for the next best college or programme. With the ever-increasing demand for higher education, it is not surprising to find all sorts of colleges and programmes in the market.

Although there are some very reputable private colleges and universities in the country, the quality of education provided by many of the private educational institutions is questionable. We often come across private colleges that are operating in small shop lots with bare minimum facilities. As for teaching staff, there is an acute shortage of qualified academic personnel. Many of the first degree programmes are taught by first degree holders and many of the lecturers in private colleges are part-timers. Appropriate student support services are found lacking in many of the smaller colleges. In order to cut costs, the length of many programmes is shortened by having classes all year round. It is possible for a SPM student to obtain a first degree in two and three-quarter years in some of the private colleges, which may be to the parents� delight - but the employers may find this young graduate too immature to be employed.

Quality of Local Graduates

When we talk about the quality of local graduates, we should include all the graduates from our local public universities. Today there are about 44,000 local graduates who are unemployed which is causing much concern to the government. Of course, the optimists will just attribute the problem to the country�s economic slowdown and hope that the problem will go away by itself when the economy picks up again. But a closer look at the problem shows that there is a band of graduates who always have problems in obtaining full-employment (that is, pay and job equivalent to that of a graduate) irrespective of the economic situation in the country. The majority of this group of unemployed are Arts graduates majoring in either the Malay language or Islamic studies showing a mismatch between the kind of human resources that is needed by the economy and what is being produced by our universities and colleges.

A quick survey of the employers in the private sector, in particular the multinational corporations, shows that they prefer to hire overseas graduates rather than local graduates. Among the reasons given: our local graduates are not well-versed in English; they do not know how to communicate effectively; they do not know how to think independently and take the initiative. They may be good in following instructions but they lack the confidence to carry out a complex task on their own.

This is probably true because our education system does not train our students to think analytically and creatively, not to mention critically. Most of our students are very good at note-taking and rote-learning. They memorize their lecture notes and regurgitate them during the examinations. They seldom read beyond their lecture notes. They do not know how to ask the right questions and are always trying to look for the correct answers. At this point, we need to ask what is wrong with our local universities?

There are many things that do not seem to be functioning properly in the universities. First and foremost, the universities have expanded rapidly to the extent that many of the older universities are bursting at the seams. Ten years ago there were only about 13,000 students in my university but today the number has increased to about 24,000 and the number is still increasing. This huge increase in student intake has caused great strain in the university system in terms of facilities and academic staff. Today it is not surprising to find students sitting on the steps of lecture halls due to a lack of space or to have as many as 50-60 students in one tutorial group due to a lack of teaching staff.

In my school/faculty itself, about one third of the academic staff have only a master�s degree. This becomes problematic when post-graduate students are supervised by non-PhD holders. It is quite common to find lecturers who do not make the cut, especially those who were recruited during the NEP period. They are the �kangkung professors� who usually give very high grades to students so that the students would not complain about their poor quality lectures. So examination grades do not mean a thing if there is no check and balance.

Another contributing factor is the quality of student intake into the local universities. In the past, our universities were elitist and selective � only the creme-de-la-creme were admitted. But today with the democratization of education, more and more students are given the opportunity to further their education after obtaining their SPM. Therefore, the universities admit a wider range of students with diverse capabilities. This problem is further compounded by the fact that admission to public universities is based on the quota system as well as selection based on the results of two different types of examination, that is, the STPM and matriculation. Those of us who have taught in the universities know that, no matter what the authorities say, these two examinations are not equivalent to one another. Students from the matriculation classes are definitely of lower quality. There is no way to compare the matriculation examination results with the STPM results, especially after the matriculation has been shortened to a 1-year programme whereas the STPM continues to be a 2-year programme.

Quality of Schooling

In talking about the quality of students taken into universities, we have to look at the quality of schooling that they have experienced in their secondary and primary schools. No doubt there are quite a number of good schools which produce straight A�s students in the UPSR, PMR, SPM and STPM examinations, but there are also many schools which fare poorly in these public examinations. These are the rural schools or schools located in areas with working class families. These schools usually lack facilities, have many disciplinary problems and are staffed with teachers suffering from low morale.

Our school system has always been criticized for being too examination oriented to the extent that students are spoon-fed by teachers and drilled to get good grades from examinations. Instead of learning to be inquisitive, to think logically, to reason for themselves, and to write expressively and creatively, students spend most of their time memorizing revision notes and practise answering questions from past year examination papers. Most teachers are overtly concerned about covering the syllabuses for the public examinations instead of engaging students in meaningful learning.

The teaching profession is in deep crisis these days, for it cannot attract talented young adults to join the profession. Having worked in the field of teacher education in the past 20 years, I can bear witness that very often young people decide to take up teaching only when they cannot find employment in the other sectors. With the low quality of student intakes, there�s little that one can do in a 9-month teacher-training programme. Most of these students are very weak in their subject content areas. Nowadays it is common to find English teachers who do not use correct grammar, mathematics teachers who do not know their sums, history teachers who do not know their facts, and science teachers who do not understand basic scientific concepts, all, teaching in the classrooms. This is going to be a vicious cycle that will be difficult to break because these teachers with their half-baked knowledge will teach the young ones who in turn will become our future teachers.

In sum, when we talk about the quality of education we have to look at the input, processes, and output of the education system and to realize that the output of one education level becomes the input of the next level. To improve the quality of education, we need to overhaul the whole system and not just tinker with certain parts of the system. If we want to expand the system and to improve its quality, then we have to increase its resources. Malaysia is not short of resources. The problem lies in how these resources are managed and utilized. Are these resources directed to the essence of education - which aims at the development of an all-round individual who has intellectual autonomy, emotional maturity, critical awareness and high morality?

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