My personal experience in a Malaysian University: OUM

OUM started with with a very impressive and age old adage that age should not be a barrier to education: in short; lifelong education but thats about all there is to the university; All lip service and hand me your money. I presume there will not be all that much of a difference from the other similarly based universities unless I hear someone speaks of one that is different I assume non exists. After your registration when you received the books that accompanies a PhD programme(I have since dropped out and I am glad) sucks first because its like the photocopies I can do better at any photocopy shop and theirs probably comes without copyright acknowledgements but this gets worse when you discover that the books have multiple pages repeated in different parts of the book so as to make it appears thick!!(Now how thick, pun intended, can a university be) and yes! it gets even more worst when you found out that the books are full of errors and wrong information. I bought a couple of books(published by McGraw Hill, Thomson, Salkind, etc.) from MPH on the same subject to verify. Lecture times are spent with life stories from the lecturer, none remotely related to the subject in study, and for any questions, please write an email and we will respond as soon as possible, does not ring too convincing then and rightly so, for nobody ever care to respond to my emails.

So registration and tuition fees snugly in their pocket, they decided to conduct a PhD Colloquium which I managed to escape from being ripped off(I'll explain later) due to my travel and work commitments. I was fool enough to register for the 2nd PhD Colloquium and found out to my disappointment that it was not to discuss problems and issues face by PhD and Masters students but a venue for the so-called Prof. Dr. to extol their greatness, their wisdom and their sob stories of how and what hardship they had gone through to complete their PhDs. Questions related to any study issues or problem are brushed aside with the comment that we should write emails to them and that they will then get back to us as soon as possible.

The whole colloquium was occupied for the morning and a major part of the afternoon by a "Prof Dr" Nagarajah and a "Prof Dr" Chung who even had to go beyond his allocated slot to tell us his sob stories so much so that the only useful part of the whole colloquium was reduced to a less than 20 minutes session with another Dr. who at least seems to be contributing something useful to us students but for the lack of time, thanks to a stupid self indulging idiot of a Prof Dr who think his idiotic past is something he can be proud of and needs to be broad casted to the world!

Having spoken to a number of their so-called Dr. and Professors, both in the administration and academic capacities, I have come to conclusion from the shallowness of their thoughts and discussions,(reading from the text!) to the arrogance of their attitudes, I sincerely doubt their qualifications or status were obtained via the usual processes or based on their academic merits or achievements.

So my recommendation to any potential student who has a genuine interest in pursuing further studies, with a genuine institution providing genuine courses with legitimatequalified academics, to avoid OUM, irrespective of how attractive their fees my appear to be.

Differences Between Degrees Awarded from Different Countries

There are many differences in degrees acquired from different countries such as the main four we are more commonly used or have more access to,that is, British universities, Australian Universities, American universities and own homegrown Malaysian universities.

The most stringent irrespective of their individual ranking within their own education systems is without any doubt British universities afterwhich comes the Australian univeristies, American and lastly Malaysian universities.

British Universities

Entry level to first degree programme would require Pre-matriculation qualification, or a Form 6 level pass as is known in Malaysia.

Entry level into Masters programme would require a 1st Class or a 2nd Class Upper Division qualification before in most case an invitaion will be extended to the prospective student to take up the Masters programme, with or without grant/scholarship and some may even require a minimum of 5 years working experience on top of all the other requirement depending on the discipline.

Entry level into the Doctorate would certain require a first degree, a masters and at least a 10 years working experience depending again on the discipline chosen, however there are ocassion where students who excel in their first degree are offered a place to do their doctorate(without having to do their Masters) usually in the field of research and again that is based on the disciple one has chosen.

Australian/New Zealand Universities

Entry level is pretty much the same as the British universities but with less stringent conditions. They act as a catchnet for those who are not the cream of the top performers and those who may have performed, due to extenuating circumstance, below their usual expectation and capabilities. It is a blessing in disguise for some but a bane for others as now they have to intermingle with less than the best.

Entry level in their Masters is the most questionable as years of working experiences can now be simply converted into some form of entry permit. I spoke with a few Professors in various universities in UK and they find it rather amusing that this can be academically accepted. Nevertheless they stressed that this sort of Masters will not be recognised in the UK. I had the experience of having some of my student who completed their Australian Masters degree returning back to college to do their first degree because their employers were asking for it !! That speaks volumes for the general acceptance of such Masters.

Entry level into their Doctorate programmes are pretty much the same without prior qualification one can simply converts one's experiences to gain entry into their PhD programmes. Only one twist to this story, they do not always called it PhD as in Doctor Of Philosophy, in fact as far as I can recall they never did but they did coined a totally new disciple called Doctor of Business Administration, or Doctor of "whatever other discipline" from which when one can qualifies, and nontheless, graduates are being address as "Dr. So and So".

American Universities

One that the Malaysian education system aspires to emulate because it is the easiest and the quickiest though I personally have serious reservations about the quality.

The American government, due to the war, the unemployment rates, poor economy(similarity can be drawn here with the Malaysian situation except for the corruption and the racial bit), decides that they will do away with exams for the critical years, like Primary 6, Form 3, Form 5 and Form 6(Upper), as is known in Malaysia, so that, firstly, they will keep their students in the system until they have acquire a basic first degree and secondly, by then hopefully, the war would be over and the economy would have improve and it did ! In order to enable all this auto-progression, standards are necessrily lowered and so all Americans are armed with a basic first degree when they graduated.(that is if they do not drop out first somewhere in between.)

With the exception of the more well-known and prestigeous university like Harvard, Preston, Yale, MIT, Princeton, Cornell and few other I need not name all, the universities churn out the population all with a minimum of a degree and to do so requires that as long as you attend a certain percentage of all your classes, hand in all your assignments and get reasonable marks for what is now known as coursework, examinations are no longer the crux upon which your entire future/career rests on or whether you will proceed higher up academically. There was at one time and I am not so sure if it has stopped yet, students(especially female) are at the mercy of their lecturers and are willing to do almost anything to secure a pass in their coursework leading to their exploitation naturally.(it was in the news quite a while back)

From the first degree to Masters and or PhDs or even Doctor of "whatever", the same methods are employed but like I repeat, not all reputable universities practises what I describe here and not all universities that practises what I describe here are irreputable. A lot despite their methods of progression up the academic ladder still does excellent research work and produces excellent personalities. With the current government and private fundings a lot of American Universities are doing thier part in the progression and success of humanity.

Malaysian Universities

Speaking from personal experiences, with all the hoohah about fake PhDs, Express, bought PhDs in the recent newspapers, I think we missed out one very important factor...the quality of the PhD. I have heard, read, being told, that you can make anybody into a graduate but you can never make a graduate into anybody(of substance or quality or of any desirable trait that is needed for a job or work, to perform well or to lecture or just administer an office!!)

When I was studying in UK(more than 30 years ago), my mentor grab me by the hand and asked if I was on a Malaysian scholarship to which I replied that mine was a British scholarship. I queried him as to why he asked me such question and he replied that the Malaysian government had requested 30 marks to be the passing rates for all Malaysian Government sponsored students to the university. I retorted that this would only lower the standard and reputation of the university in question and he replied that this is why they have decided against acceding to the request and subsequently lost the Malaysian government sent scholars(Thank God for that!!) I supposed the students eventually ended up somewhere across the Atlantic!! Now imagine for more that 30 years for each year 3 semesters and each semester Malaysian government sent just 200 hundred or more such students, how many substandard qualified personnel we have now, some of which are probably running if not heading government departments and universities. Again I am not saying that everyone passed their exams with just 30 marks, except for the really smart ones, how many stooges do we actually have, no one knows.

Now back to Malaysian Univeristies. There is a lot of political and racial overtones in the acceptance into such universities especially the public ones which I could not care less to discuss here. The one I am writing will be the mushrooming private univerisities like Segi, Inti, FTMS, Sunway, LKW, Taylor and especially so with the more recent one like WOU and OUM. My personal experience comes solely from OUM which is none too recent and very unpleasantly to say the least!!

These universites generally entices you with promises of anything and admittance with the barest and lowest requirements whether its for a diploma, a first degree, a Masters, a PhD, purely to get you to register...that leads to payment of registration fees, tuition fees, books, library access and or whatnot, after that it's all lip service. What irks me most is when they publish in the local newspaper that you will get a free laptop, a free ipod, a free godknowswhatelse, it mean you will get it only when you completed payment of your fees in full for the entire programme !! Now how's that for being tricky? Then there is one(FTMS) that guarantees employment but only with their own holding accounting firm which will in turn exploit the top student with the lousiest of pay and remuneration in the name of "training".

To have some idea of what private univeristies in Malaysia is like read my next article on "My personal experience in a Malaysian University: OUM"