Perception is good, so why is Lim Guan Eng unhappy? For someone who says he wants the best for Malaysia, Lim Guan Eng ought to be proud with the way Malaysia scores the World Economic Forum's global 2011-2012 survey. We are far from perfect (we ranked 21st most competitive in the world, overall) but we are up there, bros and sis, not down there.
Instead of congratulating his fellow Malaysians, Guan Eng is angry and upset. Or unhappy. With the Deputy Prime Minister, especially. How dare Muhyiddin Yasin said the quality of our tertiary education is better than the UK and Germany! But, hello, that is what the WEF statistics say lah. If Guan Eng is not happy, he should lodge a complain with the WEF...
I used to "process" these WEF reports as a journalist with Business Times. It was not a chore I enjoyed. But for the sake of enlightening Guan Eng and Gang, I've taken out the part in which the WEF ranks Malaysia ahead of Germany and the UK. I have added Singapore here (although Abang Din did not mention Singapore) to assure Guan Eng that Singapore is still ahead of us and for those who just love to compare Malaysia with Zimbabwe, I have also added Zimbabwe's scores here.
|The UK: 20th|
|Singapore: 2nd in the world|
Once again, boys and girls, remember that these are WEF's statistics and findings, not the Government of Malaysia's. For more detailed comparisons with Germany, click h e r e, and with the UK, here. If you would like to look at the entire WEF report page by page, click h e r e.
Quality vs Quantity. The data show other information as well. Enrollment is a question of QUANTITY and not quality. The WEF report differentiates the two. The weightage 33% is given for quality and 33% for quantity. Take page 48 of the report: tertiary enrolment rate is 36.5 per cent. The reason is not because the quality of our education is low, but the places at tertiary institutions are limited and admission is highly competitive. Quantity is straight forward and based on hard facts/official data. WEF gathered official data and distribute scores based on it. The hard fact is our enrolment rate is low so we got low score on quantity.
Quality, on the other hand, is subjective. There is no available data on the overall quality of educational system. So WEF uses Executive Opinion Survey to measure quality. And the fact is those who participated in the survey viewed the quality of our educational system as superior than that of US, Germany and UK. So if Guan Eng does not agree with them, take it with them.
But then again, we have to ask Guan Eng, why are you so against them if they think highly of the quality of education?
Does he want people to believe that we are not as good as we actually are or perceived to be?
Tony Pua also not happy.
Tony Pua also not happy.