[Malaysia] Crimea De-Recognition!

The Star, Malaysia
26 June 2005

Handle controversy on varsity rationally
by WONG CHUN WAI

IT was a meal I found hard to enjoy. Two years ago, around this time, I joined a large section of the 600-odd Malaysian students at the Crimea State Medical University for lunch.

The occasion was the visit of then Prime Minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad to Ukraine, the biggest European country after Russia, and one of his stops was to the university.

I remembered the excited faces of our young Malaysian students eagerly wanting to meet the man they respected much and to use the occasion to pose questions to him.

But hours earlier, then Education Minister Tan Sri Musa Mohamed had also told accompanying Malaysian journalists on the trip that the Education Ministry would review the status of the university.

He said the ministry wanted to re-evaluate the medical degrees from the university, adding that the university was not as impressive as those in Malaysia and Western countries.

Pointing to the large number of Malaysian students there, Musa said there was a need to review the status in the interest of the students and the country, saying "we are forced to review it for our own good".

Chatting to the Malaysian students, I remembered telling my colleagues that these young people would be very unhappy when they read our news reports via the Internet the following day. None of us had the heart to tell them of the press conference by Musa earlier.

Last week, the Crimea State Medical University issue was hotly debated in Parliament, with dramatic exchange of words resulting in a verbal clash between the Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department Datuk Seri Syed Mohd Nazri Abdul Aziz and DAP MPs.

But it was Datuk S. Sothinathan, the Deputy Natural Resources and Environment Minister, who found himself being suspended from his government post for three months after he broke ranks with the front bench.

Prime Minister Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi said Sothinathan’s action was not befitting his role as a member of the Barisan front bench and that he should not have taken the stand of criticising his own government.

Outside Parliament, the debate has continued among members of the public. Some arguments have taken a racial tone, which is unfortunate, as the matter should be examined from the country’s national interest.

The dilemma of our students at the university, irrespective of their ethnicity, should be regarded as a Malaysian problem.

There are Malay, Chinese and Indian students in Crimea. In fact, in 2003, Selangor state government officials even visited the university and signed a memorandum of understanding to place Yayasan Selangor students there.

Questions have been raised over the manner in which the Malaysian Medical Council (MMC) handled the issue as it had previously recognised the degrees from the said university.

Then, there is also the concern over why the Education Ministry had given "no objection" letters to Malaysian students, who are said to be Arts students, to pursue their studies there.

These are valid questions and it is best that they are handled in a rational manner. Our Malaysian students there must be anxiously waiting for the Government to address their worries now. All the angry outbursts and name-calling, which are unbecoming of our politicians, will not help them.

In all fairness, the alert from the Government came long ago. The MMC has the right to ensure that Malaysians abroad study at the best universities.

Among the reasons stated for the MMC’s change of heart in recognising the university included the dubious qualifications of students admitted for the institute’s medical studies, the difficulty of its medical graduates in using technical terms in English, and the strain on the quality of teaching due to the sudden increase in intake.

The MMC has stated that it would withdraw the recognition of the programme to any student registered and admitted after Dec 31 this year.

Some parents have appealed to the body to extend the deadline to another year, pointing out that when the General Medical Council of the United Kingdom withdrew its recognition of medical degrees from Universiti Malaya in the 1980s, it gave the university a five-year period to rectify what it saw as its weaknesses.

The fault of the MMC is the sudden change of heart after having given recognition earlier and the manner it is now tackling this headache.

Unlike other degrees, doctors deal with human lives and none of us want to be treated by doctors with dubious medical degrees.

But all is not lost. Graduates of the Crimea State Medical University, it should be pointed out, can still sit for a qualifying examination when they come back to Malaysia. If they pass, they can still practise at home.

There are other options. For example, Kiev University is prepared to provide courses to Malaysians using English as a medium of instruction. Musa, who had visited the university, was impressed with the facilities there.

Here is an interesting historical anecdote: Crimea, now an autonomous region in Ukraine, has a long history of conflict. The Crimean War, which lasted two years from 1854-56, was fought between Russia and the alliance of Britain, France, the Ottoman Empire and Sardinia. It was the focus of Tolstoy’s voluminous War and Peace.

Let’s hope this medical university controversy ends quickly and does not generate unnecessary tomes of words, written or otherwise.


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Go forth and seek to be educated

THE Higher Education Ministry has just released the intake figures for public universities and the usual airing of grievances looks set to be less controversial this time around.

To be sure, there will be some who will be disappointed that they did not get a place. Some will be unhappy that they did not get a course of their choice. Some will be angry that they are being sent to a university too far from home.

In a situation where demand exceeds supply, one must expect that it is not possible to accommodate every one’s needs, let alone wants.

But one headache that will not recur this year is with regard to medicine, where all students with a CPGA of 4.0 were successful in their applications. This has been attributed to a significant drop in the number of STPM straight A students and the lessons learnt from last year, which deterred many from making medicine their first choice.

The number of students offered places this year is close to 40,000, and there will certainly be much rejoicing and thanksgiving in many homes. For the majority, entry into the highly-subsidised public university system is the only option.

As these students prepare to start their tertiary education journey early next month, it is timely that we reflect on what education is about.

The journey over four years or so should not be solely about getting a degree to serve as a passport to a career and the material success that supposedly will follow.

In recent times, this script has had to undergo changes. While having a degree is more necessary than before, graduates are learning that on its own, it is not enough.This is a point that parents must bear in mind when they pile on the pressure for their children to gain degrees solely for the sake of career advancement, or insist on them taking certain courses in their own interest rather than the interest of their children.

We see for ourselves today that the number of unemployed graduates is rising but what is more disturbing is that they have been found unemployable not because of what they failed to learn from university but what they failed to learn about life.

Even basic language and communication skills are found lacking.

Education is about developing an inquiring mind that continues to hunger for knowledge long after the studies are over. Someone once said that education is what survives long after what has been learnt has been forgotten. In university, and in life for that matter, it is not the answer that enlightens, but the question.

Futurist Alvin Toffler said that in the 21st century, an illiterate person will not be someone who can’t read or write, but someone who is not able to learn, unlearn and learn again.

When Vision 2020 was launched back in 1991, the emphasis was on the need to set new standards, to aspire to the highest standards with regard to the skills of our people, to devotion to knowledge and knowledge upgrading and self-improvement, and to language competence.

These words are even more relevant today than in the early 90s. The 40,000 students must seriously ask themselves what they seek to learn at university.

Already, lecturers all over the world are struggling with students who are bent on taking the shortcuts ~ those who plagiarise, those who think research is just doing a Google search, those who do not see the need to learn from their mistakes, or those who do nothing more than regurgitate what is fed to them.

A good university is a centre for great learning, not just a congregation of marvellous buildings surrounded by marvellous scenery.

These are useful lessons for all of us to contemplate, especially those about to enter the higher institutions of learning.