On mummy’s scholarship

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MY friend Elizabeth sent 1,000 to 1,500 Aussie dollars a month for living expenses to her daughter to see her through university in Australia.

When Elizabeth learned from the newspapers a Mara-sponsored student, Tun Muhammad, had been allocated NZ$1,100 per week (equivalent to what her daughter got for a whole month) for living expenses, she was near tears but thankful her daughter had learnt to live within her means.

She remembered one night her daughter called to ask her about the different ways of cooking carrots.

“I have many carrots in the fridge, mum,” the 18-year-old said over the phone.

“If you don’t know how to cook carrots, why did you buy so many?” Elizabeth asked.

“It’s cheap. For a dollar – I could get a lot,” the daughter promptly replied.

Elizabeth has a son who scored straight As in both his PMR and STPM but, like his sister, is furthering his studies on his mummy’s scholarship.

The boy has decided to do a foundation and later into engineering course at a UK university which has a campus here in Malaysia. His foundation results were impressive too.

“That will save my mum RM800,000 for the four-year course,” he said.

A middle income family like Elizabeth’s and mine declare every single cent we earn and pay our income tax. But because our incomes are a little higher than those classified as “poor,” our children are deprived of whatever scholarships or bursaries in their pursuit of tertiary education.

In essence, our children are on “mummy (if not daddy) scholarship.”

There isn’t anything wrong or any reason to feel sour about it – on the surface at least – but the more we know about how our taxes are being inequitably spent, even for education to bolster our human capital to aid the cause of nation-building, we do feel deeply disheartened.

The thought of getting shortchanged is demoralising and does make you wonder whether the benefits (or should I say non-benefits) derivable from the taxes you pay to the government’s coffers are really worth all your sweat and toil in helping to produce a literate Malaysian society.

Whether it’s a JPA or Mara-sponsored scholarship, Elizabeth and I are contributing no small portion of the NZ$1,100 living expenses per week allocated to the recipient of such scholarship. As such, we feel we have the right to speak out.

One student known as Kelly told a news portal: “This is the end of the road – the end of my study life (if the Prime Minister’s announcement on the cancellation of JPA bursary is final). All our hopes and hard work have gone to waste. I will probably have to go and work.

“I have been working hard this past one year to secure a place in Melbourne University. I was offered a Bachelor of Commerce course, majoring in accounting and finance. I need RM500,000 to complete my study.”

Is it the end of the road for Kelly?

She said she felt devastated, betrayed and cheated.

Another student named Gerald who has been offered to study engineering at the Imperial College UK, said JPA told them they would be automatically awarded a bursary if they secured a place in one of the top 20 universities.

Imperial College could be ranked among the top 20 but from my record, Melbourne University is not.

No, it is not the end of the road for Kelly? Her JPA bursary programme still allows her to study at a local or a private university in Malaysia. I am sure many such universities offer Bachelor of Commerce degree course of universally comparable standard – and is globally recognized as well.

Of course I must give a thumb-up to our Sarawak JPA bursary student Emmeline Ting who has said this, “Although my dream of studying medicine in Australia is dashed, I’m still grateful that I can continue my studies locally. Still, I wish that we had known earlier so that we could make other plans.”

Way to go, Emmeline!

It is a blessings in disguise that the change of rules of JPA bursary has brought to light the manner in which our taxes have been expended over the years. A sum of RM500,000 can sponsor close to 10 bright students in local universities. But how many students are being deprived of the opportunity to receive tertiary education by virtue of half a million ringgit being spent on putting one single student through university under what must be “a very special scholarship?”

The Borneo Post sent one of its journalists on an educational tour of universities in May last year and some JPA scholarship students told her that those among them doing either pharmacy or dentistry in Otaga, New Zealand, were expected to return to serve for seven years.

What I read further was shocking. If they don’t fulfil this condition, they will have to make default payments of RM800,000 for pharmacy and RM1 million for dentistry. We spend RM800,000 and RM1 million sending students overseas for courses when they can do them at local universities – either private or public – at a fraction of the fee.

As a result of the poor management of scholarship and bursaries by the government, many students are also victimised.

Indeed, we have cultivated a culture among young Malaysians that they can have hand-outs for anything they want. There are always politicians to make demands on their behalf – whether sensible or insensible – in order to gain some political mileage.

As a tax payer, I support JPA’s move that scholarships be granted for studies at local universities unless the courses are not available in Malaysia. Yes, keep our top students in the country and at the same time more deserving students can enjoy scholarship to continue their tertiary education.

Moreover, it is time to upgrade our universities to world class and save the millions on sending our students to study overseas.

In our backyard is University College of Technology Sarawak (UCTS), a university built by our own state. We can talk about autonomy in education. And can we begin with UCTS?

I know the UCTS chairman Dato Sri Wong Soon Koh has a vision to turn this state-of-art university into an international university that will appeal to students from all corners of the globe.

Wong, who is also Second Finance Minister and Minister of Local Government and Community Development, brought me around the university together with his guests from Singapore some months ago.

He was beaming with pride when talking about the facilities, the laboratories and the conducive learning environment at UCTS. It is impressive.

In a chat with a lawyer friend over coffee, we both agreed UCTS should be the place to raise the autonomy of education for the state. We should therefore endeavour to make UCTS the best university in the country and, ultimately, among the top institutions of higher learning in the world. This lawyer is even ready to map a plan for a law course for UCTS!

We are anak Sarawak. We can make it!