THE SHORTFALL OF MALAYSIA EDUCATION SYSTEM

Education is a major contributor to the development of our social and economic capital. It inspires
creativity and fosters innovation; provides our youth with the necessary skills to be able to compete in
the modern labour market; and is a key driver of growth in the economy. And as this Government puts
in place measures under the New Economic Model, Economic Transformation Plan and Government
Transformation Plan to place Malaysia firmly on the path to development, we must ensure that our
education system continues to progress in tandem. By doing so, our country will continue to keep pace
in an increasingly competitive global economy (Prime Minister of Malaysia: Dato Seri Najib Tun Razak,
Malaysia academic blueprint). The question is, does our education system fulfill its requirement to
achieve our country vision? There are a few issues regarding this. So I would like to give points to
support the question which are first, our country have many graduates and yet they are unemployed.
Second, upon studying majority of student did not actually studies the program they need to so they can
have the work of their ambition. Last but not least, our education system only measure ones capability
of memorizing instead of the person intelligence.
The first thing we would like to highlight here is unemployed graduates. There are 21 public
universities and 80 private universities in Malaysia. It makes a total of 101 universities in Malaysia. Each
year a massive amount of graduates are produce but unfortunately most of them are unemployed. This
might be the problem as their certificate did not fulfill companys requirement. Many companies are
looking graduates from good universities as good universities will produce a high quality graduates.
Somehow, some of these universities are not recognized by the company thus the company will not hire
graduates from those universities. Sometimes, even graduates from good universities are unemployed.
The reasons are that they are lack of soft-skills. They did not perform well during interview. Interview is
an important part in which will decide whether you will secure the job or not and if you are unable to
tackle the interviewer you will fail to secure the positions. Soft-skills are not being teach nor practices
during studies and students will have problems to perform well during interview. Graduates that face
employment woes usually had very little hand-on experience in their education. A single hand-on
experience alone is not enough. Students need more then only one practical session as when working,
they might be exposed to unusual situation.
Every and each of us have ambition. In order to achieve our ambition in life there are certain we
have to fulfill. However, a lot of students were not being offered the program they in furthering studies.
UPU (Malaysian university online system) often choose students randomly instead of giving students
their first choice of program. For every vacancy in huge company, they need specific academic
requirements. In instance, you need a diploma or degree in actuaries in order to get a job in actuarial
field. Without this, students will not be able to work in the job field that they dream of. Apart from that,
students will have lack of interest during study. In consequence, the will not focus on their study
seriously. Thus, they do not perform well in quizzes, tests and finals which will lead to bad CGPA.
Personally, it is better to pursue your ambition and likes to pay the bills rather than do what you dislike
for living. If we do the things that we like, we will automatically do it effortlessly and with fully-hearted.
Problems exist when we are working and have to do the things that we dislike. We will have less
toleration and dynamism. And we will, for sure, get bored easily hence causes us to be having a very bad
working experience.
Intelligence is the tendency to take and maintain a direction adjustment or adaptation to the
environment global capacity to act purposefully, think rationally, and deal effectively the ability to plan
and structure behavior the process of acquiring storing, retrieving, comparing memory the ability to
solve genuine problems or difficulties (Sattler, J. M. (1992). Assessment of children (3rd ed.) Based on
the definition of intelligence by Sattler, we can see it crystal clear that being good in memorizing is not
what all it takes to be intelligence. The main problem with our examination system is that our it only
measure ones ability of memorizing instead of ones level of intelligence. For instance, our current
public examination which is SPM (Sijil Pelajaran Malaysia) is clearly testing on how good students are in
memorizing History facts, Biology terms, Chemistry equation and Physics law. And how on earth is that
helping in testing one whom is not good in memorizing? It is undeniable that we live in the world where
everyone has their one strength and weakness. There is a quote of One man's tool is another man's
weapon. So we strongly believe it will be good if government add different types of examination rather
than depending only on the current examination that we have. Referring to Everybody is a genius. But
if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid (Albert
Einstein) the authorities should take this one problem seriously in order for the country to have a better
quality of students.
So, based on points above, we strongly believed that our education system does not fulfill its
requirement to achieve our country vision as what the Prime Minister expects it will be. Thus there are
few things the country could do to overcome this problem. First and foremost is to actually listen and
think of what citizens thoughts. Second is to offer wide range of jobs to graduate which suits their
academic results and program. Third is to let students learn what they want, not what they have to. Last
but not least is demolishing public examinations and replace it with tests depends on their ability.
Therefore, we hope that our education system can be improve so that our 2020 Vision is not only a
dream but a reality that will bring goods to both leaders and citizens.