hi all,
all this debate on the quality of our esteemed universities has been
simmering for so long I just can't refuse not to join in... ;-)
Warning: sarcasm, satire, wit, true facts and logic are all mixed in
here... let's have some healthy debate!
(I am also reposting this to the python.my list, its too good to be
left to waste...
UM used to be good, that was in the days when Msia only had a handful
on Unis, USM, SPM, UKM... Now we have ...how many? 20, 30?...
Yes, edu especally Uni has gone down the tubes in Msia, in that
respect we're becoming a 'banana republic'... when I was Philipines
quite a few years ago, they have a 'University' in a block of shop
house, I thought that was pretty uncool, but then now we have that in
Malaysia. That's progress!
Why that's uncool, well for one thing, you cannot provide a conducive
knowledge-based environment. How inspiring can it be staring at
another drab building, and hanging out at the local mamak to discuss a
momentous world class technopreneureal idea.... I think not. Hey you
can't even find a basement to start off your project in... (like
Google, Yahoo, Youtube...)
Besides shophouse don't make good locations for data-centres,
supercomputing centre (lousy powersupply and cooling), you can't have
a genetics lab (bio hazard!) or a nuclear research lab (nope I don't
think you can fit your heavy-particle collider in here..)... so forget
about 'high' tech. So such a facillities can only be a 'low' tech
'degree mils', churn out as many blur (as sotong) grads as you can.
The other problem of course is you have blur educators (by this I
don't only lay the blame only on lecturers and academic staff but also
those in charge of education policy... they are the ones who determine
the agenda!) Also as someone pointed out, our professors don't publish
papers, well we can't really blame them. The shophouse scenario is not
very inspirational, and they can't have a fancy lab in those tiny
buildings anyway. Also I guess there are also no equivalent peer
reviewed publications like Science and Nature (where world famous
professors and Nobel Laurettes publish their papers) in Bahasa
Malaysia...
Talking about 'frightening' scenarios, when visiting a friend who is a
Assc. Professor in a local Uni, I was handed a syllabus and asked to
guess what year was it for. A quick glance through it and I said
perhaps pre-U or 1st year. Nope, wrong he said, its 3rd Year! Thats
how low standards are! So I asked surely you are unhappy about this
level, can't you teach at a higher level, no, was his reply, the
Lembaga Accredition Negara sets the policy and everyone has to
follow... and that's the standard!
Duh... what does a bunch of bureaucrats know about Comp Sc. Not a lot
it seems! (this happened abt 3 yrs ago). Now it seems its a bit
better, but they are letting Microsoft determine the syllabus,
groan...
Red1 hit the nail on the spot, a Uni is to 'Cari Ilmu' not 'Cari
makan' (for both students and lecturers!) but we have since lost the
ideal. Also, our edu system are like mushroom farms - "keep the
students/mushrooms in the dark and feed them a lot of sh*t". So all
this spoon-feeding produces a bunch of workers who are totlly without
initiative and waiting to be told what to do.
Let me back that up with another anecdote, a friend who was embarking
on a project involving embedded processors, spoke to a Uni professor
to get 1 or 2 of his better students to work on the project to qualify
for their industrial training. This friend is a very experianced
design engineer that has worked for >15 years in multinational
semiconductor companies, certainly used to leading project teams. The
usual briefing tookplace, outlining of targets/goals, providing
documentation and h/w (PCBoard for microprocesor development...) and
after 2 week on non-productivity, the student wss asked whay hasn't
he/she produced anything? The answer was - "...you didn't show me how
to do it!" Then at the end of the industrial training, the guy had the
cheek to ask, why he was'nt given a glowing report?!
So aren't our edu system producing mushrooms? Mushrooms who think they
are very important and that the world owes them a living?
And if this a better student, then what are the 'not so good ones' like?
And exams,... well passing an exam only shows that that particular
person is good at passing exams, not neccesarily his actual skills.
Especially when its not evaluated with other types of work... And now
we have projects... ah another anectdote, this is from a Uni near to
cyberjaya (students, take note if you want good project papers...)
some of the students are pooling money together to hire Indian
programmers working in Cyberjaya to write their projects for them!
Lecturers found out when otherwise mediocre students were turning out
'professional quality' code in their projects!
Yes Malaysians are good at 'gaming' the system.
And now a pop quiz question, to all the OSS readers out there...
" If you are interviewing and employing programmers, and you had 2
final candidates, 1 has a MSc degree and the other has done a Google
SoC (Summer of Code), and assuming they don't have bad personal habits
except for working strange hours... who would you choose?
I'll pick the Google SoC guy anytime, the rest agree? [1] [2]
But, do the students know that?
Does the educators know that?
Do the policy makers know that? ....
I believe that this bit of knowledge falls into the "you have no
idea...." category that Red1 mentioned before.
So after all this ranting, what positive suggestions? Well, after a
discussion with local grads, some new some not so new, I've come to
the conclusion that it boils down to 2 things:
1. market supply & demand
The educators and edu system 'think' we need graduates with a certain
skillset, the students think the market wants a certain skillset, so
the whole system is geared to churn out graduates with those
skillsets. But everybody forgot to ask what the industry/market wants!
Well of course the commercial vendors like MS, Oracle, Cisco is more
than willing to tell them, but nobody asked the industry....
2. gov policy
They have a target to meet, churn out as many IT Engineers as
possible, to meet the projected job demands of our upcoming booming
Silicon Valley. Nevermind about the quality....
(maybe this is the MS-Way, release a buggy product, dominate the
market, then fix the bugs with service packs..., nope doesn't work for
IT engineers... those bugs, poor knowledge & skills, are impossible to
fix, (let alone expectations...) and there is no monopoly! just import
programmers from India!). Hence we have a MSC populated by foreign
knowledge workers and unemployed IT guys by the boatload
So the solution is quite obvious....
I think we in the OSS community do represent a segment of the
makrket/industry. We have to let both students & educators know what
is needed by us, the industry[3].
1. Hence programs with Unis & students are a good thing, which i
notice are now happening.
But I feel we must also 'draw in' the academic staff and the policy makers.
2. Let students know, that OSS is a viable alternative. That being a
technopreneur, is viable (with MDEC,MOSTI funds now available...) and
this segment of employment is growing, rapidly.
3. Educate Students and Lecturers on what are the required skillsets,
more so when educators havn't been in industry! (like they say..
"Those who can, do, those who can't, teach!" my bad;-)
(when Python.my ran a course for UMP, it was pretty well attended by
students, but the lecturers were nowhere to be seen... perhaps they
already knew Python, and found no need to seek new knowledge? Or
perhaps they were 'proffessional' lecturers and we are not, nevermind
that each of us has >!0 in industry? I would have loved to talk to
them.)
4. Engage with edu policy makers, in Uni in MOE (Min of Edu), let
them know what are skillsets needed, and these are independent of
whether its OSS or not.
Also educate them that OSS is the fastest growing segment of our industry.
5. Engage with Gov. IT Champions/facillitators (MDEC, MAMPU). Run
programs that upgrade skills and place value on skills. Perhaps OSDC
can organise run programming competiotions, web-design competitions,
organise courses (The Java one is a good thing, but have it also for
Python, PHP, Ruby...) Have more technical exchanges, ie: like
lightning talks (short talks), BarCamp like events (but don't let the
marketeers dominate) etc...
and have them more often, not just once a year!
6. Engage the Industry.
Organise with the Gov. Champions, talks/programs aimed at private
sector, especially SMEs/SMIs, where OSS can make an impact (less cost,
exploit the BSA Anti-Piracy Campaign)
Again run it often...
Also work with Unis and Gov/Private Sector with and make/have a
program for job placement for part-time or industrial training.
7. Have a mentoring Program
Coordinate, manage projects whereby senior experienced OSS guys can
mentor more enthusiastic students on their industrial traning projects
etc... ala Google SoC...
[1] Pls don't get me wrong, I have nothing against MSc (Maybe just a
Msian MSc), but a SoC project under a good mentor delivers a better
skill set for someone I'd like to hire.
[2] Of course if I'm hiring for a MS Shop, then the answer may be
different...;-)
[3] "teach the principles, not the product" - The generic skillsets we
seek is not different from the proprietry SW guys... its not a
question of language or platforms but basic skillsets. ie: logical
thinking/problem solving skills, understanding methodology,
algorithms, tools (RDBMS, OS, languages). The point here is Unis
should be teaching principles and practical applications of
principlas, NOT specific products(.NET or Oracle, etc...). If a person
understands the principals - say of programming, it can be applied to
any language.
* Disclaimer, these rants are strictly my own opinion and not those of
the 'owners' and readers of the lists.
On Sat, Sep 26, 2009 at 1:58 AM, Mohammed Firdaus
<[email protected]> wrote:
> Swee Meng,
> Can't be as bad as a learning institution at TPM.......
> Thanks,
> Mohammed Firdaus
>
> On Sat, Sep 26, 2009 at 1:55 AM, sweemeng ng <[email protected]> wrote:
>>
>> DId I tell you that when they say real world. Many lecturer never in one..
>> It is in university when I heard comments that this is not used, or that
>> is not used.
>>
>> Place of learning my foot. It is not even on the priority list. Exam is,
>> learning is not. In fact learning useful thing not in exam, is way below in
>> priority. School politics got much bigger attention
>>
>> On Sat, Sep 26, 2009 at 1:52 AM, sweemeng ng <[email protected]> wrote:
>>>
>>> The real issue is, what research, there is no research....
>>>
>>> There is more to CS than Enterprise Software. Though it is equally worth
>>> studying
>>> And there is many interesting stuff in computer science. program
>>> validation, concurrency, AI, kernel level design, etc. Even application of
>>> existing theory is fascinating. Nope, none is happening.
>>>
>>> I am hoping to learn to understand how OS works, or how to write a
>>> compiler when go to university. Instead I just got to learn something that I
>>> already learned before I got into uni.
>>>
>>> University that I know of, just turn into a vocational school, and it
>>> don't even do a proper job at that.
>>>
>>> SAD, real sad
>>>
>>> 2009/9/26 red1 <[email protected]>
>>>>
>>>> Mohd Hidzuan wrote:
>>>> > bro red1..
>>>> >
>>>> > lupakan Uni lain.. masih ada AeU.. sekurang-kurangnya.. utk buat masa
>>>> > ini.. janganlah takut seketika sahaja... hehehe
>>>>
>>>> AeU, entah keberapa rankingnya kerana baru je terbit.. tapi ada lagi
>>>> berita baik. Lagi sebuah IPTS ingin turut melakukan research centre
>>>> untuk ADempiere. Acheh pula mungkin buka peluang universiti pertamanya
>>>> berdasarkan FOSS. Semua masih dalam berbincangan. Akan dihebohkan
>>>> sekiranya jadi.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>>
>
>
> >
>
--
#-------
regds,
Boh Heong, Yap
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