No News Is Bad News
Malaysia tak tahu malu (knows no shame)
KUALA LUMPUR, Dec 7, 2023: Malaysia is a country governed by Governments that know no shame since Merdeka (Independence) 1957.
No matter what office one holds, low or high, you can get away with making stupid statement without facing any action, including MPs, ministers and tertiary education lecturers.
Malaysia today is the No.1 laughing stock of the world whenever Malaysians, especially MPs and university lecturers and professors with PhDs (doctorates) making silly and stupid statement without having to account for their ignorance.
Today, socio-economically and in terms of hi-tech development, Malaysia is lagging many countries in Southeast Asia and Asia that were once behind Malaysia.
In short, Malaysia is deteriorating due to its failing education system and policies.
Don’t take Singapore as an example because socio-economically, it is too far ahead of Malaysia.
Just compare the present Indonesia with Malaysia.
While the Malaysian Governments (governments are elected once every five years), including the current so-called Madani Unity Government, know no shame, the Indonesian Government knows shame and does not hesitate to sack stupid officials.
President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo signed a decree on the immediate dismissal of Indonesian Child Protection Commission member Sitti Hikmawaty following her scientifically inaccurate claim that “strong sperm” could impregnate women in swimming pools.
If Malaysia is to do the same to silly and stupid government officials, including those who hold high office, thousandsd would lose their jobs.
Indonesia knows shame and must act to rid the stupid government officials so that the rest of the world’s confidence remain intact.
This is certainly unlike tak tahu malu (knows no shame) Malaysia.
No News Is Bad News reproduces below a Jakarta Post report on the sacking:
Jokowi fires child protection commissioner who made 'pregnant from swimming pools' claim
(The Jakarta Post) Jakarta
Mon, April 27, 2020
President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo has signed a decree on the immediate dismissal of Indonesian Child Protection Commission member Sitti Hikmawaty following her scientifically inaccurate claim that “strong sperm” could impregnate women in swimming pools. “[The decree] has been [signed],” State Secretariat secretary Setya Utama said on Sunday as quoted by tempo.co. The presidential decree states that Sitti would be dishonorably discharged from her duty as a KPAI member. The dismissal would be carried out through the Women’s Empowerment and Child Protection Ministry. KPAI chairman Susanto had called on the State Secretary to promptly dismiss Sitti on Wednesday. The agency's ethical council previously recommended Sitti’s immediate removal from office, saying that she had violated the commission’s code of ethics by making the statement. Read also: Child protection commissioner apologizes for saying ‘strong sperm’ could impregnate women in swimming pools The ethical council also said that Sitti had been dishonest in claiming that her statement was backed up by scientific studies. Council chairman I Gede Dewa recommended that Sitti resign voluntarily or risk being dishonorably discharged by the President himself. Sitti nevertheless refused to resign and urged the President to reconsider her dismissal from office amid the current COVID-19 pandemic. “Allow me to plead to the President that this is a time when every element must work together [for the country’s best interests],” she said in a statement on Saturday. Sitti became the subject of controversy in February after saying that women should exercise caution when swimming in public swimming pools for fear of getting pregnant. “There is an especially strong type of male sperm that may cause […] pregnancy in a swimming pool,” Sitti said in the interview. “Even without penetration, men may become sexually excited [by women in the pool] and ejaculate, therefore causing a pregnancy.” She initially defended her claim, saying that it was based on scientific journals, but later retracted the statement and apologized. The KPAI itself issued a response saying that Sitti’s statement did not represent the views of the organization. (rfa) - The Jakarta Post
‘Strong sperm’ could impregnate women in swimming pools, child protection chief says
‘Even without penetration, men may become sexually excited [by women in the pool] and ejaculate, therefore causing a pregnancy,’ she says
Tuesday 25 February 2020 11:25 GMT
A senior child protection official in Indoniesia is facing calls to resign after she reportedly claimed women could get pregnant from swimming in the same pool as men with “an especially strong type of male sperm”.
Sitti Hikmawatty, the Indonesian Child Protection Commission (KPAI) commissioner for health, narcotics and addictive substances, made the claim during an interview with local news site Tribun Jakarta last week.
She said: “There is an especially strong type of male sperm that may cause pregnancy in a swimming pool. Even without penetration, men may become sexually excited [by women in the pool] and ejaculate, therefore causing a pregnancy.
“If women are in a phase where they are sexually active, [such a pregnancy] may occur. No one knows for sure how men react to the sight of women in a swimming pool,” she added.
According to the Jakarta Post, Indonesian Doctors Association (IDI) executive Nazar said it would be “impossible” for women to be impregnated in a swimming pool.
She said: “The water in swimming pools contain chlorine and other chemicals. Sperm cannot survive in these conditions.
A popular doctor and health influencer in Indonesia, known as Blog Dokter, said in response to Ms Hikmawatty’s claims: “Once again, I remind you, if you do not understand health problems, it’s better to be quiet. Instead of your comments causing anxiety and panic.
“I will emphasise here, swimming with the opposite sex will not cause pregnancy. Not all men who swim ejaculate and sperm cannot live in chlorinated pool water, let alone swim into the vagina.”
Ms Hikmawatty issued an apology on Sunday after her claims drew backlash from the Indonesian public and the medical community.
“I apologise to the public for giving an incorrect statement. It was a personal statement and not from KPAI. I hereby revoke the statement,” she said. “I plead with all parties not to disseminate it further or even make it available.”
Susanto, chairman of KPAI, also issued a statement to clarify Ms Hikmawatty’s claims did not represent the organisation.
He added: “We hereby state that KPAI’s understanding and attitude are not reflected in the online news narrative.”
However, some Indonesian netizens are calling for Ms Hikmawatty to resign or be sacked for her uneducated claims as they caused embarrassment after going viral.
“Now that this story has gone viral all over the world, Sitti should indeed step down,” said one Twitter user.
“If you don’t step down, the whole world will think all KPAI members are stupid.” - Independent
Saturday 2 December 2023
Malaysia’s education system going to the dogs
No News Is Bad News
Malaysia’s education system going to the dogs
KUALA LUMPUR, Dec 3, 2023: Much has been written about Malaysia’s deteriorating education system over the past decade.
However, the Governments (once every five years) continue to live in denial, focusing on quantity instead of quality.
It also continues to embrace skin colour, instead of meritocracy, in the admission of public universities, thus forcing many bright and talented students to seek tertiary education overseas.
Most of Malaysia students graduate and do well in their various fields, thus there is absolutely no reason for them to return home.
That is how, over the past decade or two or three, Malaysia has been losing talent as the brain drain flows freely.
The above image, found on Facebook, best sums up where Malaysia’s education and socio-economic progress is heading.
No News Is Bad News reproduces below articles on Malaysia’s growing education woes:
Academic plagiarism and intellectual fraud
by Rom Nain
Malaysian higher education, evidently, is once again in the limelight. Once again, for the wrong reasons.
Over the past couple of days, news has gone around that four researchers from a local public university had deliberately manipulated images in a co-authored article published in a prestigious international academic journal.
These accusations, not surprisingly, were levelled by international scholars and not local ones.
The four, from Universiti Malaya (UM) - our oldest and, often enough claimed, our most prestigious, public university - were initially accused of duplicating and manipulating images of cells in their article.
An article which allegedly had three versions was published in three separate journals.
Sadly for them - and certainly for UM - the allegations initially exploded over the scientific community’s social media and then spread to other platforms, finally catching the attention of the mainstream scientific media.
The main author, not surprisingly, initially brushed off the charges, providing ‘reasons’ that even non-scientists who had examined the article found rather incredulous.
Now, it has come to the attention of the Malaysian Higher Education Ministry and the authorities at UM. And UM has acted swiftly enough to investigate yet another potential scandal and possibly discipline any wrongdoers.
There will surely be more revealed over the next few days and, I’m sure, there will be demands that the heads of the four researchers, if found guilty, roll. But will they? And even if they do, will the wider problems be resolved?
Going by previous incidences of this nature, one doubts anything major will be resolved. In 1994 a professor at the same Universiti Malaya went to court to defend herself against allegations of plagiarising the work of her students. Despite the evidence, she remains a professor till this day.
A couple of years back, the infamous Ridhuan Tee, while an associate professor at the Armed Forces University, was accused of plagiarism as well. Again, despite the clear evidence, he was able to move to another university on the east coast, getting a promotion to full professor to boot.
Then there is the infamous University of Bath/UiTM debacle earlier this year, when graduates from the UK university discovered that their theses had somehow found their way into UiTM’s repository, with UiTM’s copyright and watermark on them.
UiTM, predictably, apologised, asserting that it was a technical error that had caused it all. It is still unclear today why the Bath papers were gifted to UiTM by a staff member, and whether she or he had the right to do so.
Fundamental issues of integrity
Needless to say, there are a number of things we can - and must - take away from these cases that strike at the core of fundamental issues of integrity. Namely, the integrity of individuals, the integrity of the Malaysian academic profession and, yes, the integrity of our institutions.
It is, after all, easy to apportion blame to individuals, such as the four UM researchers or the professors who blatantly plagiarised the works of others.
But, unfortunately, these cases - alleged by many in Malaysian academia as barely ‘scratching the surface’ - will continue if the core issues and problems are not located and sincerely addressed.
Of course, one could say that they indulge in these activities because they feel they can ‘get away with it’. But why do they do it in the first place? And why does it seem so prevalent these days?
To begin to answer these questions, we would have to at least go back to this relatively recent phenomenon of university academics needing to meet pre-determined Key Performance Indicators (KPIs).
Pre-determined, often enough, by university administrators more concerned about pleasing their political masters than they are about the welfare of their staff and, even less, about any commitment to a particular academic ethos.
Hence, meaningful university teaching and research be damned. Instead, a technocratic view of what higher education, particularly the role of universities and academics, is advanced.
Indeed, in Malaysian academia, increasingly it has become a case of institutions and individuals having to meet certain, often quantifiable and quantitative, targets.
And achieving high international rankings yearly has become the name of the game.
For some public universities, especially those designated as `research’ universities, publishing in top-tier Institute for Scientific Information (ISI) and Scopus journals now is the main, sometimes determining, criterion for promotion.
It is within this cauldron of quite rapid change and shifting of priorities - often directed by politicians and their ministries - that we find many of our public universities and their faculty members.
This, of course, hadn’t been the case for a long time. Indeed, it could be argued that the slide began the moment politics and notions of what has derogatorily been called kulitocracy took top priority from the 1980s onwards.
Policies that led to the recruitment of faculty due to their skin tone and, more subtly, their political affiliation, rather than the grey matter in their head, led to a culture of conformity and mediocrity being developed. For some critics this gradually replaced the emphasis on dedicated teaching and learning, and doing good research that had been cultivated in the 1960s and 1970s.
‘Carma’ academics
This was facilitated by (administrative) structures that reiterated policies and strategies that (still) disproportionately reward what the national laureate, A Samad Said, has rightly called the ‘carma’ (cari makan) academics.
These often are the apple polishers, those who turn academia into an arena where rapid advancement means getting on and moving up the administrative ladder; from section to department head, to programme chair, to head of school, to dean, deputy vice-chancellor and vice-chancellor. Stopping briefly on the way, of course, to pick up a ‘datukship' or two.
And this group has grown significantly as the number of public universities has rapidly increased. Often quite clueless as to what constitutes good - let alone path-breaking and innovative - research, yet now needing to ‘publish or perish’, they look high and low for the ‘right’ ingredients, however halal or haram, to enable them to come up not only with publishable papers, but also those that often have to meet international criteria and standards.
Unfortunately, when the environment all this while has not helped to nurture whatever research and writing skills they may have, and they now have to regularly produce ‘international’ publications, many find themselves in a quandary.
And the haram options become more enticing. Apart from manipulating data, there are other, shall we say, less haram, options, of course.
Indeed, more widespread, arguably, is this practice of putting one’s name as a co-researcher on the work done by one’s supervisee/student. Even when all the work has been done solely by the student.
Of course, dodgy publishing houses have cottoned on to this widespread desperation by academics. So, we have the case of academics (often aided by their institutions) paying substantial sums to purportedly international publishers to get their articles published in what are really dubious journals and books.
Needless to say, it is within this wider context - of dodgy academic standards, a legacy of a mediocre research culture and environment and a rapidly changing academic milieu and, of course, a general lack of integrity from the top downwards - that we have to locate the alleged offences committed by the UM4 and others mentioned.
Virtually nothing happens in a vacuum. Yes, if found guilty, the wrongdoers must be truly punished - and not just transferred to some other university where they are promoted.
But, issues of integrity, dignity and ethics will not and cannot be simply resolved that way. More detailed and critical examination of the environment, the policies and the strategies that have led to this sad state of affairs, will need to be conducted.
This would require political will and a genuine commitment to removing the rot that has set in public - and increasingly private - universities.
And I don’t believe that many of us are so sanguine as to believe that this will happen any time soon under this regime.
ROM NAIN is a media analyst and academic who is weary of incompetent, unethical leaders and their apologists and spin doctors in the media who try to get away with murder while professing to rub shoulders with God’s angels. - mkini
Thursday 23 November 2023
Education, graduates are about quality, not quantity
No News Is Bad News
Compare what foreign graduates are churning out for their PhDs (doctorates).
Education, graduates are about quality, not quantity
KUALA LUMPUR, Nov 24, 2024: Chief Statistician Dr Mohd Uzir Mahidin sounded so proud when he revealed that Malaysia produced 5.92 million graduates in 2022.
He is reminded that education and graduates are all about competency and quality, not quantity.
What is the use of churning out graduates who are unable to write or converse adequately in English, the international language.
How then can they compete globally, least gain the confidence of employers.
And, just study the above image that was found on Facebook and compare what our so-called graduates are churning out for their PhDs (doctorates).
No News Is Bad News reproduces below national news agency Bernama’s news report on the millions of kangkung graduates in Malaysia:
Malaysia recorded 5.92 million graduates in 2022, says Statistics Dept
Monday, 20 Nov 2023
6:16 PM MYT
PUTRAJAYA: Malaysia recorded 5.92 million graduates in 2022, while the graduate's unemployment rate stood at 3.7%, according to the Graduates Statistics 2022 released by the Malaysia Statistics Department.
The Chief Statistician, Datuk Seri Dr Mohd Uzir Mahidin, said the number of graduates in Malaysia rose by 5.1% in 2022 to 5.92 million people from 5.63 million in 2021.
"A positive economic environment throughout 2022 has led to an increase in the number of graduates in Malaysia, which has reached a substantial 5.92 million persons. This is composed of 23.1% of the population in the working age of 15 years and above," he said in a statement on Monday (Nov 20).
Mohd Uzir said degree holders comprised 53.9%, or 3.19 million people, while diploma holders comprised 46.1% or 2.73 million people.
"Out of the total number of graduates during the year, 5.06 million were in the labour force, resulting in a graduates' labour force participation rate (GLFPR) of 85.4%," he said.
He added that year-on-year, the number of degree graduates in the labour force rose by 5.6% while diploma graduates increased by 5.5%.
Mohd Uzir said the number of employed graduates increased by 6.0% in 2022 to 4.87 million, compared to 4.59 million in 2021.
"Around two-thirds or 65.6% were employed in the skilled occupations category, accounting for 3.19 million persons," he said.
The highest share of employed persons in the skilled category, 38.4% or 1.87 million persons, were employed in professional occupations, followed by technicians and associate professionals with 17.7% or 860,400 persons.
Graduates employed in the semi-skilled category, which accounted for 32.8 % or 1.60 million people, were largely service and sales workers (14.0%), clerical support workers (10.7%) and craft and related trades workers (4.9%). About 1.6%, or 781,000 people, were employed in the low-skilled category.
Mohd Uzir said the unemployment rate of graduates eased by 0.4 percentage points to a record 3.7% in 2022, compared to 4.1 in 2021, while the number of unemployed graduates decreased by 5.5% in 2022 to a record 187,800, compared to 198,700 in 2021.
"In 2022, Malaysia's economy had gradually regained momentum towards recovery and fostered a healthier labour market situation compared to 2021," he said.- Bernama
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