Why the worthless degrees from Unirazak? Is it in the name?

By admin-s Last updated Feb 11, 2015

“If the Unirazak graduates are deemed not qualified as their degrees are not recognised why allow the university to operate?”

Jimmy Adit, The Ant Daily

You have always wanted to be a teacher so you applied to enter the government universities.

But somehow none of those universities accepted you despite the fact that you have all the basic subject requirements.

You were not the only one, of course; there were hundreds others who got rejected by these government universities.

So you, like the rejected rest, looked for other options, surfed the Internet, read the education section of the newspapers and got your hands on brochures.

Then you came across this Universiti Tun Abdul Razak (Unirazak, or better known as Unitar in Kuching) prospectus:

Bachelor of Education (Hons)
JPT/BPP (MQA/PA1704) 02/15; JPT/BPP (MQA/PA1859) 02/15
APPLY NOW

That, however, was not the only option; you had another:

Bachelor of Education (Early Childhood Education) (Hons)
JPT/BPP (MQA/FA1746); JPT/BPP (MQA/PA1872) 04/15
APPLY NOW

The brochures came with a long list of requirements for both programmes.

You enrolled, put every effort you could muster through the four years, spent thousands of ringgit besides the scholarship loan they gave you, and at the end of it, you graduated.

Now that you have got the Bachelor of Education (IMSP) you thought you would soon be a teacher in a government school.

But alas, you were given the bombshell – your qualification is not recognised by the government!

Unitar’s Bachelor of Education is worthless, yet schools in Sarawak are struggling because they don’t have enough teachers!

The Education Ministry talked about re-employing retired teachers as a way to ease the problem. Even talked of looking overseas to help overcome teacher shortage.

But at the same time it insists on not recognising these unfortunate Unirazak/Unitar graduates.

“If the Unirazak graduates are deemed not qualified as their degrees are not recognised why allow the university to operate?

“The authorities might as well close it down so that people would not waste their time and money pursuing worthless qualifications,” Parti Rakyat Sarawak (PRS) president Tan Sri Dr James Masing said when the matter was brought to his attention by Unitar Kuching graduates on Feb 6.

Masing went on to say that it was very unfair that while many Sarawak graduates were still left unemployed, hundreds or maybe thousands of West Malaysian graduates were posted to the state.

“The state has been turned into a dumping ground for West Malaysian graduates and we do not want this to happen,” he stressed, calling on Education Minister Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin to seriously look into the matter and be fair to Sarawakians.

“Stop posting West Malaysian teachers to Sarawak because we have people without employment who can also do the same job just as well, if not better than, teachers from Peninsular Malaysia since they understand the local situation well,” he said.

But what happened on Feb 6 was not the first.

In December 2012, Mahasiswa PKR (PKR University Students) had questioned the credibility of Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak for failing to solve university graduates’ unemployment problem.

“Two thousand IMSP graduates were deemed ineligible to apply for jobs as government school teachers although MQA recognises education degrees from Unitar.

“In fact, Unitar’s ISMP syllabus is the same as the syllabus at teacher training colleges and IPTA (public institutes of higher learning). However, they are not given equal opportunities in their application to become teachers,” the movement’s president Haziq Abdul Aziz said.