UM the “Best University in Malaysia”?

[fyire]

This' a bit long, but a rather interesting read indeed:

A IT graduate from UM has written a long account questioning the quality of lecturers in the nation’s premier university, University of Malaya (UM) after his three-year experience.

CTH raised many pertinent questions and exposed many weaknesses in UM, including:


Why were some lecturers (even Professors) wasting time while lecturing?
Why all the lecturers in his faculty did not have their own self-compiled books for the subjects they are responsible?

Why no originality from the lecturers who just regurgitate from the textbooks?

Why some of the lecturers lack self-confidence that they dare not have eye-contacts with students while teaching?

Lecturers who dodge from using a technical book or technical aspects of a subject because they themselves lack technical skills – the main problem of local IT graduate unemployment.

Poor English proficiency of young lecturers, who use broken English with some who “just totally avoid using English at all” – English “has reached the lowest point since Malaysia’s independence”!


Although CTH’s email is rather long, it is worth reading through.

The question uppermost in everyone’s mind is whether there is the political will to salvage the quality of UM and the other public universities in the country.

This is CTH’s cry on behalf of all Malaysians:

I graduated from the Faculty of Computer Science and IT, UM two years ago. I was so happy the moment I received an offer letter from UM confirming my application to the course was successful.
I thought it was the best public university in Malaysia, even better than any private colleges in Malaysia. I thought the best lecturers and academicians must be gathered in UM, the best education system must be there, etc.

Soon after the first semester started, I began to feel skeptical about my pervious perception of the quality of education offered by UM. But after the second, third and fourth semesters, the situation still remained the same. I was totally disappointed and devastated at that time.

Is this the so-called best University in Malaysia? I wondered then. I started to realize why those ministers and wealthy parents are sending their children to study overseas instead of aiming for local universities.

Here are the “unbelievable qualities” of the lecturers I encountered throughout my three–year journey in “The Best University in Malaysia”.

1) Why were some lecturers (even Professors) seemed to be wasting time while conducting lecture. And why would they often digress from subject syllabus and talk nonsense topics. Why would they always expect students to read (actually memorize without much understanding because lecturers do not explain) on their own. If so, why do we need the lecturers? Then, why do we need to attend varsity? Wouldn’t it be good if we can sit back at home and absorb knowledge on our own? We can even save the fees paid to university!

2) Why the ALL the lectures in my faculty do not have their own self-compiled books on the subjects they are responsible for. They would simply pick a book on the market (always written by US authors and do not seem to be suitable for Asian students) and then all the content of that particular book would automatically be the syllabus for that paper. (I know lecturers of private colleges must have their own self-compiled books, every one of which is a concentrated combination of several books in addition to their own thoughts, opinions and research). More seriously, they do not even have the capability to summarize the essence of the chosen book to be used during lecture. Instead, they would use bulat-bulat the PowerPoint note attached to the book as the material to be projected on the screen while teaching.

3) The material presented to the students are bulat-bulat without any modification from the book. Then, the lectures would start their lesson by again reading out each of the sentences written on the PowerPoint note. Once in a while, the lectures would add a bit of their so-called explanations” which are actually not significant, not insightful, no moot point and often taken from the text book itself. Are the students attending lectures just to listen to them mumbling [deleted] throughout a lesson without gaining any insightful speech, opinions and analytical thoughts from the lecturer?

4) Why some of the lecturers do not have confidence at all in their eyes while teaching? They would just conduct their lessons in their reading style with a self-esteem-less look. Sometimes I noticed those lecturers who are lousy enough not even dare to stare face-to-face or have eye-contacts with students while teaching. What the crutch-bound lecturers care about is their own bowl of rice without considering whether or not their students learn something useful.

5) As I said earlier, the lecturers actually solely use commercial books as their teaching materials. Most lecturers always dodge from using a technical book for teaching a particular subject. They often choose a book discussing from a general perspective without touching much technical aspects (which is always much more difficult) of a subject.

Without much technical skills, this is why so many IT students from local universities are unemployed. All a company wants from an IT employee are technical skills, nothing else, at least before getting promoted to managerial levels.

Why the lecturers dodge? Clearly all the students know that the lecturers themselves do not have technical skills. Why they do not have technical skills at all? This is because local universities do not impose industrial working experience as a pre-requisite to becoming a lecturer at local universities. This means if those lecturers want to work in the IT sector after several years of teaching, they have to start from the bottom because they have no skills.

On the other hand, working experience in the IT sector is necessary to becoming a lecturer at private college. That’s why IT courses offered by private colleges are so much better in terms of quality and practicality.

When it comes to graduate unemployment, who deserves the blame the most? I think it is the Deans who mismanage their faculties, the lecturers who are by far unqualified, selfish and lazy and of course the Malaysia’s education system as a whole.

6) I wonder at the standard of English of the lecturers hired in local universities. Those older lecturers clearly have a much better command of English than the younger ones. Sadly, most of the younger lecturers’ English levels are just unacceptable. Some of them just use broken English
mingled with bahasa while teaching. Some would just totally avoid using English at all!

What? This kind of lecturers can be found in the “Best Varsity in Malaysia”? No kidding, it is very true! There are abundant totally unqualified lecturers in local universities. What a shame! With so many lecturers being weak at English, can we expect our students to be good at English when they graduate from universities? Our national English level has been plunging since English was replaced by bahasa as the language of instruction. Now it has reached the lowest point since Malaysia’s independence. Can I ask you a question YB Lim? Whose idea was it in the
government to replace bahasa with English in the 1960s? It was such a stupid, short-sighted, tunnel-view, and selfish proposal!

7) A year after graduating from UM, I received an email from a so-called Venture Capitalist saying he was interested in commercializing my final year IT project. I was baffled at the beginning at at had happened. After exchanging a few emails with the Venture Capitalist, it dawned on me that the UM lecturer in charge of marking my final year IT project had presented it without my consent at a IT conference attended by academicians and investors in the IT field. I was told by the venture capitalist that the UM lecturer even claimed credit on the project presented at the conference, and my name was put as the second co-author of it. A few weeks later, I was asked to personally present my complete project at an IT company in front of the venture capitalist and the CEO of that company. Even though they finally turned down my project after the presentation, the CEO told me that I could actually take legal action against the lecturer who had misappropriated my project and claimed credit on it. There are not just abundant of lousy lecturers, but even unethical lecturers in out local varsity!

The quota system for university entry is bad enough, but the biased process of hiring lecturers at local varsities is much deadlier. If one fails to get into local varsity, he can always go to a private one. When unqualified lecturers are hired just to help a particular race, it affects all the students indiscriminately whether they are from STPM or Matriculation.
Imagine, a one-hour lesson is often attended by around 100 students. If a lousy lecturer fails to deliver a quality lesson attended by a 100 students, he or she literally wastes 1000 combined hours (1 hour lesson X 100 students).

University graduates should have learned a lot by the time they graduate if there were not so many unqualified lecturers in local universities impeding students from gaining useful and practical knowledge. What makes me so sad is that students in local universities are so blindly meek and obedient, they would not dare to complain or even protest even they get the worst lecturers and education.

All the above-mentioned points have transformed our university-level education system into a rigid memorization-based one. When a lousy lecturer conducts a lesson, he or she would just follow blindly what is in the text book without much explanation of his own, not to mention their own analytical views and inspiring opinions. Without much understanding, the students would resort to merely memorizing whatever appears in the textbooks. Not surprisingly, most examination papers I have taken were well pandered to the memorization-based environment triggered by those unqualified lecturers. Moreover, most examination questions are not original; they are often copied from books or the internet.

YB Lim, you have got to believe me that I will never allow my children to attend any local universities in the future after I personally experienced all the nightmares in University Malaya. Honestly, I only came across 2 or 3 good lecturers throughout my whole course consisting of more than 30 papers. Of course, one can argue that there are still 1 or 2 good faculties in UM like Medicine and Engineering. My opinion is that most students in those faculties are exceptionally excellent. Even if they do not get good lecturers to guide them, they still can perform quite well. Of course, if they could get the best lecturers in the country, I think we will be able to produce our first Nobel Winner soon in the future.

From: http://blog.limkitsiang.com/?p=626

Freaky read isnt it?

[angel1011]

even local colleges have the same dilemma I think.... been hearing complaints from my college-grad friend about crappy lecturers too

[fyire]

Originally Posted by angel1011

even local colleges have the same dilemma I think.... been hearing complaints from my college-grad friend about crappy lecturers too

Hehe.. I used to have so much fun with such lecturers Reciting the University grevience procedures to them, and daring them to flunk me if they dare to

[zy]

some lecturers.. wow....

in my college, there is a lecturer who is really good at linear algebra & different equations..

he can waste a lot of time
there is once where he took 1 hour ticking class attendance..
he will ruin your confidence easily, have to fight back if you beleive you are right

[doraemon]

unless u study urself and do a lot of research, else u'll only pass the exam base on the book....graduate with all the nonsense from the book

[fyire]

I guess what I find the most appalling in that letter was the complete lack of respect for Intellectual Property. Don't get me wrong here, I'm not supporting restrictive patents or anything here, but among academics, IP is something extremely sacred, and for the lecturer to submit the student's work and attempt to take credit for it is just a big no no in the academic world.

My former University even had its Vice Chancellor sacked for improper referencing work for a paper that he had published like 20 years ago.

[The_YongGrand]

Oh man, the local universities should really start working harder and not becoming more complacent if they want to acheive world-class universities.

[doraemon]

tat's why all the fresh grad now know nth when starting their new job, and some company hired them because they got the paper, not their skill or knowledge!

[peaz]

Well...speaking as a fellow UM graduate.. I'd say... stop complaining and start working for yourself. WTH.... since when do we all want to get spoon-feed??? So what if the lecturer is dumb? so what if their english is bad? so what if the use commercial books? SO what???

Just study yourself la! Since when the degree is a given thing? You have to @#$@# work yourself for it.

As an UM graduate.. i see benefits of getting a degree from UM and not any other local (or even private colleges uni). Seriously... there is something to it, (not trying to sound racist here but just stating a matter of fact) being a chinese and getting out of UM. The only question is how are you making that fact work for you? Did you learn anything else other than just books in UM? IMHO, it's not books and knowledge that you learn in universities.. it's the experience... such experience like handling idiotic lecturers and perhaps also even fellow classmates. That's what you learn. If you want to just gain knowledge... uni isn't just the only place.

Blah... do you see me regretting graduating from UM? No... proud. totally. benefitted... even financially? I would say yes. But is it from what i learn in lessons and books? Totally not the case. And with that I rest my case....

[fyire]

Originally Posted by peaz

Well...speaking as a fellow UM graduate.. I'd say... stop complaining and start working for yourself. WTH.... since when do we all want to get spoon-feed??? So what if the lecturer is dumb? so what if their english is bad? so what if the use commercial books? SO what???

Just study yourself la! Since when the degree is a given thing? You have to @#$@# work yourself for it.

As an UM graduate.. i see benefits of getting a degree from UM and not any other local (or even private colleges uni). Seriously... there is something to it, (not trying to sound racist here but just stating a matter of fact) being a chinese and getting out of UM. The only question is how are you making that fact work for you? Did you learn anything else other than just books in UM? IMHO, it's not books and knowledge that you learn in universities.. it's the experience... such experience like handling idiotic lecturers and perhaps also even fellow classmates. That's what you learn. If you want to just gain knowledge... uni isn't just the only place.

Blah... do you see me regretting graduating from UM? No... proud. totally. benefitted... even financially? I would say yes. But is it from what i learn in lessons and books? Totally not the case. And with that I rest my case....

Well, that's one way of looking at it, but I think you're missing the main point here. Most of the people concerned about situations like this are thinking more of in the years ahead. Should the trends in such local education institutions are to continue on, would it be a place where you would want to send your children to?