Unresolved questions over cabinet's JPA scholarship approvals

As a parent of one of the 63 students - Public Service Department (JPA) and non-JPA scholars - who had for the last four months petitioned JPA and Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad for our children to be granted overseas scholarships, I welcome the desire and intention of the cabinet in its recent meeting to approve 13 JPA overseas scholarships on an 80:20 cost split. Well done!

The cabinet’s decision, however, has given way to more confusion, despair and anguish amongst the group of 63 students and parents.

This student group had been very energetic, resourceful and had initiated the political will to push for a decision on their petition. They had engaged with nearly 10 Ministers and 15 MPs and senators. However, JPA did not address these students’ petition or even raise any issues or seek feedback from this student group.

The key issues of concern not addressed are as follows:

1. Selection of ranking criteria

These 63 students were given unconditional offers by universities listed within the top 50 in the world by the QS World University Rankings. With this, they submitted their appeals individually and as a group to JPA. Subsequent to their submission, there was never any feedback, response or query by JPA, including the usage of QS ranking for the universities.

However, when the decision was announced three days ago on the group of 63 students’ petition, most unfortunately the Times Higher Education (THE) ranking of universities was used instead of original QS ranking which the petition was based on.

This came as a shock to us, as nowhere was the THE ranking ever brought up or mentioned since our submission in May 2018.

The list of THE ranked universities is very US-centric. The decision by JPA to adopt the THE ranking rather than QS in their policy gives an impression that it was insidiously designed to eliminate the UK-based universities, which the majority of the 63 students have received offers from. 

This seems like a half-baked and half-hearted effort taken by JPA to weave a policy just for the sake of being seen to respond to the petition by the 63 students, but totally not addressing the petition at all.

Ever since his appointment, Education Minister Maszlee Malik has been proudly referring to the QS rankings in relation to the progress and achievement made by Universiti Malaya (UM), which is currently ranked 87. This certainly reflects the credibility and reputation of QS-ranked universities, that even Maszlee holds it in high regard.

So, it is surprising that JPA is ignoring a reliable ranking methodology which has Malaysian universities rising in their ranking over the years. How can JPA have inconsistent views and differing levels of confidence as compared to our education minister? If this is so, it is certainly is a major concern for us.

Both QS and the THE have an international ranking for universities – but they use different methodologies for creating them. This can drastically change the results, and consequently, the ranking of a university.

For QS, the most important variable seems to be academic reputation, which carries a weighting of 40 percent in their world rankings, and 30 percent in their regional rankings.

For THE, their Academic Reputation Survey takes up slightly less of the weighting in their world rankings, at 32 percent. This means that, if reputation is high on your list of priorities, QS could be the better option.

Given that both QS and THE are equally reputable, we strongly appeal that both rankings are adopted for this particular exercise.

2. Recognition and reward to non-JPA scholars

Amongst the 63 students who submitted the petition, there are 22 who are non-JPA scholars.

JPA scholars are those who had obtained at least 9A+ in their SPM exam. These 22 non-JPA scholars do not have 9A+ in SPM. 

However, they are amongst the top students, many of whom achieved between 5A+ and 8A+ with the balance in As. Most of them fall under the category of 9A students who had been identified as “excellent students” by their high schools.

It is no surprise that they all did very well and were offered non-conditional offers to study at top-ranked QS universities. Some of these non-JPA scholars had been accepted by even better and higher-ranked universities in both QS and THE rankings than the JPA scholars.

Penalizing these non-JPA scholars solely based on SPM results is very unfair. These students have redeemed themselves in A-Level exams and by getting into better universities than JPA scholars. There should be no reason to be unfair to them.

We strongly appeal that JPA makes the proposal to cabinet to extend the scholarship to these deserving 22 non-JPA scholars.

3. Value for money investment

The cost for the 22 non-JPA scholars would be around RM4 million annually.

There have been many JPA scholars who have accepted offers from overseas universities and have sought last-minute funding from private organisations such as YTL and Mah Sing and certain charitable bodies, thus relieving JPA from having to sponsor them as bursary students in local universities.

Hence, the balance in the JPA bursary budget that was set aside years ago could be utilised for these 22 non-JPA scholars. It would also not require any additional funding from the government.

To conclude, I appeal and hope that the cabinet will adopt both QS and THE rankings in awarding overseas scholarships to the group of 63 students, and extend the JPA overseas scholarships to the 22 non-JPA scholars as well.   -Mkini