Another Nazri howler – scrapping scholarships to stop brain-drain!

ARCHIVES 2010

By admin-s On Jun 17, 2010

We must not allow Nazri to try and deflect our attention from perhaps the most pressing question. How come not enough money for overseas scholarships?

Wong Choon Mei, Malaysia Chronicle

Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department Nazri Aziz is no stranger to controversy or to controversial remarks that have been panned by Malaysians of various races throughout the country.

And it looks like he may be in for another public grilling soon.

In an interview with the Malaysian Insider, Nazri was reported as saying the government’s decision to stop giving overseas scholarships to top students would prevent further brain-drain – already a major obstacle to economic growth in the country.

“Sending overseas students causes brain-drain where some of them won’t want to come back after studying there for a few years. If you keep sending students overseas, when are we going to improve our standards (locally)?” Nazri was quoted as saying.

Defending the indefensible

Now, before Malaysians rush to tear apart his hypothesis, it should be pointed out that Nazri is not at all an unintelligent person. He is just trying to defend the indefensible.

Let’s look at his argument that by not sending our young and talented overseas, they won’t want to stay away. Firstly, isn’t his reasoning shallow to the point of being ludicrous, especially for a member of the Cabinet? Or is it because he is a member of the Cabinet that his logic is skewed!

Anyway, should not he and his government colleagues be asking why don’t the students want to come home? Is the comparison between other environments and Malaysia so unfavorable that her smartest and brightest can so callously opt not to return?

Also, if we don’t send our young abroad, how can they pick up new knowledge, new skills, new understanding, new sense of where the world is moving? What kind of ideas can they pass on to the others?

Or is Nazri advocating that Malaysia closes its doors and that her people should keep re-inventing the wheel while the rest of the globe whizzes ahead?

Same set of old problems

Also, how come Prime Minister Najib Razak and his predecessors never commissioned a survey to find out why and what are the factors that make other countries more attractive to Malaysians than their own country of birth? Or did they but the results were too sensitive to make public, too politically inconvenient and risky for the ruling elite to attempt to correct?

Would it also be wrong to guess that such a survey would have come back splattered all over with embarrassing words and phrases like meritocracy or the lack of it; racial favoritism and too much of it; stifling democracy, rising corruption but sinking human rights, and so forth? Wouldn’t these have been the typical feedback?

We must also not allow Nazri to try and deflect our attention from perhaps the most pressing question? How come not enough money for overseas scholarships?