private sector participation in education, and reviewed the current
experience in <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns =
"urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" />Malaysia. In this fourth
essay, I survey the experiences elsewhere for useful lessons that could
be relevant To Malaysia.]
The Experiences Elsewhere
In formulating a policy that would envisage a greater role for the private
sector, it is worthwhile to review the experiences elsewhere.
Private Schools
In America, everyone is entitled to free publicly-funded education from
K-12 years. In fact schooling for this age group is compulsory. While
the government is not directly involved in preschool there are many
publicly-funded programs targeted for children of disadvantaged families.
Preschoolers excepted, most (over 85 percent) American
children attend public schools where not only is the tuition free but so
too the textbooks and transportation. There are also no examination
fees. Contrast that to Malaysia where while the tuition is free, there
are considerable added burdens of the cost of books, uniforms,
non-tuition fees, and transportation.
There is no pubic subsidy of private schools in America, as in
many countries. Consequently these schools are only for the wealthy.
However, many of these schools recognize their social responsibility and
provide generous scholarships to promising students from poor families.
That is also a smart way to widen their talent pool as well as provide
diversity to their student body.
To the north in Quebec, Canada, the state subsidizes private
schools that meet its standards and prescription. Such subsidies reduce
the tuition by as much as 30 percent. It is also an effective way for
the state to exert influence over these private schools. It is not
surprising that Quebec has a high percentage of its students attending
private schools (17, as compared to 10 in America).
Chile has a novel system of vouchers. With a voucher a
student is free to attend any school, public or private, with the school
collecting its revenue through the vouchers of the students it enrolls.
The salient point is that judgment on a school's quality (and the
decision to enroll) rests entirely with the consumer: the student.
Unlike in Quebec, the government exerts no control over these schools.
It is sufficiently enlightened to recognize that the best judge of a
school's quality is not some central authority but its pupils and their
parents. The market will take care of the mediocre schools.
Central to this assumption is that the performances of these
schools must be widely distributed so parents could make an informed
decision.
Thailand has another approach towards private – specifically
international – schools. Its leaders recognize that the national
curriculum is hopelessly out of date but the teachers and administrators
are incapable culturally, intellectually and politically of changing it
as they have been brought up under the system.
Thus Thailand approaches the problem from a different angle.
It opens up the system to international schools with their own sets of
curriculum free from controls of the Ministry of Education (MOE). The
government still exerts controls but only in areas other than the
curriculum. For example, these schools must meet certain physical
requirements and be headed by a Thai national.
These schools must also be accredited by a recognized
international body. That is smart as there is no way for those
bureaucrats in the Thai MOE to competently evaluate these schools.
There are currently nearly 100 such schools in Thailand, not a
large number but enough for a critical mass. These schools are not yet
within the reach of the middle class, as in Quebec. However, as these
students end up at leading universities abroad, and as they are also the
children of the elite, they are destined to be influential. They would
be capable later of effecting fundamental and transformational changes as
they had not been brought up and trapped by the rigidity and stultifying
culture of the current national system. The Thai experiment is certainly
worth watching.
A slightly different model is South Korea. There are private
schools there but except for their being free of government funding,
there is not much difference between them and public schools. The same
rigidity, mindless memorization, and strict blind obedience to authority
exist as in pubic schools.
To escape that cultural stricture, South Korea allowed many
private international (primarily American) schools with their independent
curriculum and medium of instruction, as with Thailand. Two such schools,
Daewon (established in 1983) and Minjok (1993) deserve special mention.
Both use English exclusively, designed to prepare the best Korean
students for global leadership. At Mijok, the emphasis is on
"Teaching-Discussion-Writing," away from the usual memorization and
regurgitation that masquerade as education in Asian schools.
The remarkable feat of these two schools is that their short
history notwithstanding, they are now the biggest feeder schools for
elite American universities. This being Korea however, the two schools
still cannot escape their cultural trap. As one former Daewon teacher
commented, one of her students committed suicide on the day her SAT score
was released.
Private Universities
Today there are private universities even in the most socialist of
countries, with Russia now boasting more than 200. For the most
successful model however, you cannot beat the American system of private
colleges. If you take anybody's list of the top 25 American
universities, the vast majority would be private. Looked at another way,
private American universities dominate anybody's list of top global
universities. That is reason enough for Malaysia to look closely at the
American model.
First however, I need to clarify the terminology. Those
private American universities like Harvard are not "private" in the same
sense as IBM or Microsoft Corporation. Meaning, they are private but not
profit making; they do not have shareholders eagerly anticipating
dividends. Instead they are non-profit entities, akin tax-wise to
non-governmental groups (NGOs). As such they enjoy considerable tax and
other advantages. These universities are entitled to research grants
from governmental agencies, and their students are eligible for
government grants, loans and scholarships, just like students at public
universities.
In return for those privileges, these universities have to
abide by certain rules, like subscribing to Federal affirmative action
rules and non-discriminatory practices in admissions and hiring. It is
this unique public-private partnership that makes American "private"
universities shine.
There are "real" private (meaning, profit-making and
proprietary) universities; DeVry and the University of Phoenix being two
of the largest. However, they never appear on anybody's list of top
universities. Their student body too is entirely different, made up
mainly of working adults rather than those coming straight out of high
school. They also do not have the traditional campus of a "regular"
university.
Private universities in other countries are more like
America's DeVry than its Harvard. In Malaysia's pursuit for private
universities, the American non-profit institutions like Harvard should be
the model, not the proprietary ones. Unfortunately most private
universities in Malaysia are of the DeVry variety. They have their place
and help feel a void, but they would never lead the nation to greatness.
Many countries are importing wholesale this American model by
inviting them to set up branch campuses. By far the most successful (by
this I mean the most number of campuses) have been the Middle Eastern
countries, undoubtedly facilitated by their oil wealth.
There are definite limitations to this wholesale importation.
Even if I were to transplant en bloc the Stanford campus in Dubai, the
university will never be the Stanford of Palo Alto. Try bringing a
speaker critical of the government to speak on campus at one of the
branches of the American universities in Dubai! Those countries that are
enthusiastically transplanting Western campuses in their home soil forget
one salient element. That is, what contributes to the greatness of
Stanford include the general social, economic and political environment
of California specifically and America generally.
This wholesale importation is not a recent phenomenon. Early
in the last century Western philanthropists set up the Peking Union
Medical College. It quickly achieved its goal of being the Johns Hopkins
of China. However, with the Cultural Revolution all that painstaking
gains were destroyed. That institution has since regained its original
premier status with the return of sanity in China.
Another successful experiment, also led by Western
philanthropists, is the American University in Beirut, established in
1866 at the height of Western imperialism in the region. With its
Western curriculum and teaching style, it quickly eclipsed such venerable
institutions as the centuries-old Al Azhar. Today with the turmoil in the
region, the luster is off that institution, but for a long time it
remained the jewel in the crown of the Arab intellectual world.
Malaysia too has dabbled in its own version of American
importation but with little success: the Malaysian University of Science
and Technology (MUST) set up in collaboration with Boston's MIT. It would
take more than just grafting the name of a prestigious American university
to make your campus respectable.
A more enduring endeavor would be to adopt the concept of a
western liberal education, and with the help of proven scholars and
educators, establish your own institutions. The Aga Khan did this,
setting up campuses first in Pakistan and then in other Muslim countries.
Its success can be gauged by the fact that its medical school,
established in Karachi only in 1983, has today an international
reputation far exceeding other long established universities in that
country.
What the Aga Khan proves is that what is important is not the
building of fancy Western buildings or the pasting of a prestigious name
that would make your institution great, rather the adoption of the
concept of liberal education, academic freedom, and the pursuit of
knowledge.
This is what our policy makers must keep central as they
examine the various models and envisage a greater role for the private
sector.
Next: Part Five: Private Sector Participation in Schools and
Pre-schools
.
----------------------------------------------------------------
This e-mail has been sent via JARING webmail at http://www.jaring.my
No comments:
Post a Comment