Yap takes one for the album with his wife Patricia Liow and son Caleb.
KUCHING: Age has proven not to be a barrier in the pursuit of knowledge for Yap Yin @ Yap Kee Kong, 74, and Datuk Lau Pang Heng, 67, who both graduated yesterday with Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) degrees from the Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities at Universiti Malaysia Sarawak (Unimas).
For Yap, he said he decided to pursue a PhD after ‘thinking about it’ since 2003.
“I was transferred from Peninsular Malaysia to Sarawak in 1981, and I discovered there is a great disparity in the sharing of the economic pie between Peninsular Malaysia and the people in Sarawak.
“That’s why after serving in UiTM (Universiti Teknologi Mara) in Samarahan for nearly 30 years, I decided to do something about it,” he told reporters when met after receiving his PhD degree during the university’s 23rd convocation ceremony, here.
He said his PhD research, titled ‘National Unity and Integration’, utilised modern statistical techniques, computer simulation techniques and social science to build a simulation model which generated a scenario for each ethnic group for 2020, 2030 and up to 2050.
Yap said he found a lot of scenarios that need to be improved in order to have better unity and integration between Sabah and Sarawak, and the peninsula.
He added he has not completed his study because at the time of its commencement, he only considered four ethnic groups – Malay, Chinese, Indian and natives of Sabah and Sarawak.
“I feel that I need to do another social capital study for the natives of Sabah and Sarawak which would be more accurate, and I hope that what I do will help non-governmental organisations and the government to promote unity and integration in Malaysia,” he added.
Yap is also a firm believer in life-long learning, pointing out that it was important for those pursuing knowledge to persevere.
“For example, the technique I am using, system dynamics, was only developed in the early 1990s. I graduated from Scotland in the 70s, you see, so at the time there was no system dynamics. That’s why we persevere in pursuing knowledge as more techniques will come out and we can use it for the development of our society and community.
“If I just decided to stop learning after leaving university 50 years ago, I don’t think that there would be something like what is happening now.”
Meanwhile, Lau said that his PhD journey started because he developed an interest in learning about community policing practices and crime prevention in Sarawak.
“In order to gain the necessary knowledge, I felt strongly in 2016 that I needed to do further research; read journalistic articles and books related to community policing practices overseas, so we can tailor-make the same thing in Sarawak.
“That’s the reason I enrolled in the Unimas PhD programme, and the title of my research is ‘Community Policing and Crime Prevention in Kuching, Sarawak’,” Lau, who is Sarawak Community Policing Association chairman, said.
He also expressed his keen interest in sharing and contributing what he has learnt from his PhD journey with the community.
“I think that (sharing) is important because if we just keep what we learn to ourselves and don’t contribute to the community, that defeats the purpose. So my duty is to return what I’ve learnt to the community in the coming months and years,” he said.
He also encouraged fellow Sarawakians to enrol in a research programme at Unimas, as he felt the standards in Unimas were top-notch.
“If you like to do research, enrol in Unimas because the Unimas PhD research programme has a very high standard,” Lau enthused.
As many as 4,038 students will be receiving their scrolls in the university’s 23rd convocation ceremony, which is spread over five sessions.