JPA doctors don't want to come back

Yet another example of how JPA scholars are blatantly flouting their bonds. The Star reported that '236 medical graduates studying overseas under Public Service Department scholarships refused to return home to work.'

Another take on the JPA policy change

This letter was written by a friend of mine, the astute Neil Khor. Many good points raised by him.

Have merit-based system for scholarships
Neil Khor | Jun 9, 08 2:48pm

I refer to the Malaysiakini report PSD scholarships: Publish names, results.

There are many reasons why everyone should be given a scholarship. A student with 11As, who comes from a poor family living in rural Malaysia is definitely someone who deserves support. The government or charitable organisation that supports such a student is uplifting not only an individual but also his family, helping them out of poverty. That is what a government scholarship should ultimately do - better all lives not just the individual.

Which brings us back to the issue of the contentious 45% quota for non-Malays, an increase from 10%. Here is a case of knee-jerk reaction. If urban, mostly non-Malay constituents have rejected the BN, the government - with its great compensatory power - now wants to buy back their votes by giving more non-Malays scholarships. At the same time, this creates an opposite reaction from certain Malay groups, losing them Malay voters.

If the government really wants to take the wind out of the opposition’s sail, they should simply do away with race-based quotas all together. The criteria should be purely merit-based. There must be clear and objective methods of measuring how disadvantaged a student really is. If he or she comes from the rural area, it must be ascertained that the individual deserves the scholarship because of the lack of resources, not merely financial but also infrastructural - lack of good teachers, library etc.

However, if the individual lives in the big city but is the son of a hawker and has to help out in his/her parents, then the individual also needs to be assisted because urban poverty has denied him/her access to the library or facilities at school. Here again, a merit-based system can be implemented. The level of rural or urban poverty can be indexed.

Luckily, Malaysian men are such poor academic achievers and we may not need to provide similar handicaps for Malaysian women, although many deserve such extra help because we still live in a patriarchal society. Attitudes toward female education has changed and here the government can really take some credit for improving the lot of women.

But most importantly of all is quality of distinctions. The education ministry might want to make examinations more stringent to avoid giving the impression that all students are deserving of a scholarship. This does not mean that everyone has to fail but rather the award of a distinction must be of the same quality through time. An STPM distinction in 1992, for example, was regarded as much more valuable than a distinction in the A-Level Examinations in the UK at the time. Similarly, a UM degree of 1996 was acceptable to the Cambridge University for entry into its postgraduate degree programmes.

As for extra-curricular activities, they make for a more rounded individual. But one must be careful not to push people into activities they would otherwise not join simply to earn merit points. Extra-curricular activities give us an impression, particularly at the interview session, of the candidate's maturity and commitment to excellence. The scholarship board can then judge for themselves whether or not the candidate has the right qualities that will ensure he/she actually finishes the degree course.

The BN has to take bold steps to reform Malaysia. No body or organisation will deny a Malaysian a scholarship if he/she has the grades, comes from a disadvantaged background, is an all-rounder and has the track-record of delivery. We are now entering a period of belt- tightening, with less money to spend on development or education as all our resources are channeled to combating inflation. It might be wise for the government to implement a merit-based system that does justice to this new generation of Malaysians.

As for all the various race-based organisations and their detractors, they can still go about promoting race-based scholarships. All they need to do is to set up their own scholarship funds and finance worthy students through those funds. Now that the government has limited resources, it is time to ask ‘what you can do for the nation’ rather than demand for primordial rights. For ‘nothing comes of nothing’ thus by demanding without actually deserving or giving, does more harm than good. There is nothing wrong in wanting to help but it is not right to take away from others just because of the colour of their skin.

JPA scholarships - an update

Saw this update on the Star. 161 Indian students received the JPA overseas scholarship, up from 120 last year, an increase of 34% which less than the 400% increase in the quota for non-Bumi students. (from 10% to 45%)

I found the 120 number a little strange. If the previous quota was 10% and only 2000 scholarships were given out, this means that non-Bumi students should have gotten only 200 scholarships. If 120 were given out to Indian students, then presumably only 80 were given out to Chinese students.

The reason I find this hard to believe is that my encounters with JPA students have always led me to conclude that there were more scholarships given to Chinese compared to Indian students. That there would be more scholarships given to Indian students doesn't make sense from an observation standpoint nor does it make sense from a political standpoint. MCA's lobbying power is presumably greater than that of MIC's and as such, it doesn't make sense that there would be more Indian JPA scholars than Chinese JPA scholars.

Please note that I am not making any claims as to who 'deserves' these scholarships more. I'm just trying to look at the figures from a rational standpoint and they don't make sense.

One possibility is that the MIC Minister, S Subramaniam, got his figures for the previous year wrong. Another is that JPA was already awarding more than 10% of the JPA scholarships to non-Bumis. I'm not sure which possibility is more likely.

But if the JPA policy change was implemented this year, then this must mean that most of the balance of the 900 scholarships should have been allocated to Chinese students which is approximately 740 scholarships (taking away the 160 allocated to the Indians). This means that Chinese students are probably the biggest beneficiary of this policy change. If we assume that there were about 150 scholarships allocated to Chinese students before this policy change, this would represent close to a five fold increase!

Remember what I said in this earlier post about some people ignoring the intra ethnic distributional consequences of the JPA scholarship such as the fact that most Malay recipients would be from middle class families? I think that we may also ignore the intra non-Bumi distributional consequences.

It is no surprise to me that the freeing up of this quota system would benefit the Chinese more than the Indians. Not only are there more Chinese in this country, a larger proportion of Chinese are in the middle class, which following the above logic, would be in prime position to capture gains from policy liberalization. Again, this is not an argument for the superiority of one race over another. It's making conclusions based on sound logic.

This story also tells me that we need to be clear about what the JPA scholarships hope to achieve. Is it just to award the top scholars who disproportionately come from the middle classes? Or is it to give a leg up to scholars from the lower classes? There is a trade off between these two objectives. Of course, they can be straddled someone - such as having a proportion of the scholarships means tested - but this trade off will continue to exist.

I'm not jumping up and down just because more Chinese and Indians will receive the JPA overseas scholarship. My thoughts on this topic is well documented in this blog. Most of these scholars won't come back to Malaysia and even if they do, won't serve the government in any way, shape or form. It's still money wasted, in my opinion but since JPA scholarships are not going to go away or be revamped anytime soon, I need to keep writing about it.