Free Universal High Quality Education for Sarawakians

Free access to high quality learning resources is something that I believe many of us Sarawakians would never have thought could be real. Today, it's our new weapon for mass education, and great quality.

YouTube EDU and Academic Earth have done well in spreading learning.

This is welcome news for students and families around the world who have had little educational choice in the past, except that provided by the public sector. It is globalisation bringing education to students across the world, shortening the distance between countries and bringing quality lectures to emerging and developed nations.

Given that we are entering into the Web 2.0 era, Google has an opportunity to go further in upsetting status quo. It can do so by launching, in tandem with YouTube EDU, contests and small prizes for students to enrich the core material.

Opportunities for improvement include creating and sharing translations, mini-case studies, transcriptions, and slides to accompany the courses. Winners of such contests can be chosen through a combination of peer voting and expert review to ensure accuracy of the proposed enhancements.

Precedents exist for engaging students from poor communities in creation of eLearning resources. At http://www.openworld.com and http://www.entrepreneurialschools.com, sample YouTube clips and online work-study research projects show what students in extremely impoverished, war-torn areas of the world can do in response to small (USD30) microscholarships, vouchers, and prizes.

Billons of camera phones capable of recording and sharing short video clips are heading to impoverished areas of the world in the next few years.

If YouTube EDU opts to encourage co-creation opportunities for students, a wealth of new eLearning resources may be generated by media-capable students who are now shortchanged by 19th century-style schools.

This may create an grassroots opportunity for new, market-sensitive learning ventures to flourish.

In line with its “Education anywhere and anytime” vision, the Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU) imparts on students, courses on public health, art, music and various other subjects through mobile phones. IGNOU now serves about 1.8 million students in India and 32 countries abroad through 21 Schools of Studies and an elaborate network of 58 Regional centres, 1804 study centres, and 49 overseas centres.

Looking at the mobile phone penetration in Malaysia, we can think of using the medium to impart education. Education and technology cannot be seen separately. Following IGNOU's steps in spreading learning to rural India, Malaysia can likewise, take education, especially vocational education, to our kampongs through mobile handsets.

IGNOU believes in imparting quality education to the masses. These easily accessible modules would be implemented in collaboration with the Communication and Manufacturing Association of India. The courses are offered through text, video and graphics mode. IGNOU would also provide public health courses on nutrition, public health, AIDS awareness, and many other educational contents. Furthermore, students do not have to pay anything extra for the new service.

YouTube EDU launched, on 26 March 2009, an educational hub “volunteer project sparked by a group of employees who wanted to find a better way to collect and highlight all the great educational content being uploaded to YouTube by colleges and universities”. The site is aggregating videos from dozens of colleges and universities, ranging from lectures to student films to athletic events. Some of this stuff is solid gold (the Stanford and MIT lectures are really good).

Academic Earth is an organization building a platform for video and other educational resources from top universities, think tanks, and conferences. The company has the stated goal of “giving everyone on earth access to a world-class education.”

Academic Earth offers 60 full courses and 2,395 total lectures (almost 1300 hours of video) from Yale, MIT, Harvard, Stanford, UC Berkeley, and Princeton that can be browsed by subject, university, or instructor through a user-friendly interface. Additionally, editors have compiled lectures from different speakers into Playlists such as “Understanding the Financial Crisis” and “First Day Of Freshman Year.” The site also features a roster of famous guest lecturers on entrepreneurship and technology including Larry Page, Carol Bartz, Tim Draper, Elon Musk, and Guy Kawasaki.

These aren't radically new ideas. Fora.TV and BigThink both offer intellectual video content online. iTunes U hosts a lot of university content as well. Unlike Big Think, Academic Earth isn’t creating original content, it’s just repurposing existing academic content. And Fora.TV seems to focus more on speeches and public lectures. But Academic Earth has the right plan around providing free course lectures. You can watch an entire semester’s worth of lectures in a few days.

Fellow Sarawakians, you know what to do.

Sarawak's Future for Middle-Skill Jobs

Source: SCAN www.tiny.cc/sarawakcan
Based on 9MP figures, can our future generations have sustainable livelihood from secure income and long-term employability? From analysis of 9MP figures and global trends, few conclusions and recommendations can be derived related to Sarawak's human capital development and sustainable livelihood of its people now and in the future.

One key area to take a hard look at is middle-skill jobs. A range of new government policies could help low-income workers obtain more education and training for middle-skill jobs, thereby raising their earnings and their family’s living standards. At the same time, the new Sarawak state government must generate new demand for middle-skill workers, by developing key sectors of the state's economy and by implementing new economic, social and educational policies.

What are middle-skill jobs?

Classifying occupations into a few skill categories is awkward, given the many elements of skill required for most jobs. Under an approach that classifies jobs based on education and training levels, “middle-skill” jobs are those that generally require some education and training beyond secondary school but less than a bachelor’s degree. These post-secondary education or training requirements can include diplomas, vocational certificates, significant on-the-job training, previous work experience, or some college, but less than a bachelor’s degree.

We divide the broad occupational groups into high-skill, middle-skill, and low-skill categories based on Statistics Dept's estimates of the educational attainment and training of people in those jobs. Using this information, we define:


* High-skill occupations as those in the professional/technical and managerial categories.

* Low-skill occupations as those in the service and agricultural categories.

* Middle-skill occupations as all the others, including clerical, sales, construction, installation/repair, production, and transportation/material moving.


This definition is clearly imperfect, since there are many professional/technical and service jobs that are clearly middle-skill while there are jobs in the clerical, sales and other categories that are not; but, on average, these discrepancies tend to cancel out, and trends in these categories roughly capture the ones SCAN wants to focus on.

Salary Trends based on SCAN's Analysis

When wages as well as employment grow faster than average for a given skill group, the implication is that labuor market demand is rising more rapidly for workers in that skill category than for other workers. For workers in middle-skill jobs, recent wage patterns paint a complex picture.

The annual earnings gap between workers with college degrees versus workers with secondary school certs has certainly widened for over 30 years, although it did not increase at all between 2000 and 2006 for full-time workers above age 24. Those with associate degrees now earn, per year of education, a similar wage premium over those with only a secondary cert. In 2006, the median worker with an associate degree earned about 33 percent more than those with only a diploma, while those with a BA degree and no graduate degree earned 62 percent more.

Turning to occupational differences, several middle-skill occupations have experienced rapid wage increases in recent years. In the eight years between 1997 and 2005, the average Sarawakian worker had an overall inflation-adjusted wage increase of only about 5 percent.

Certainly, not all positions in middle-skill occupations pay well or are well-situated on career paths that promise wage advancement and not all middle-skill positions experienced healthy increases in real wages after the late 1990s. In some categories not requiring post-secondary education or training, wage increases lagged behind the average. But the figures indicate that demand for-many middle-skill occupations is rising well enough to generate not only strong employment growth, but also growth in wages.

Job Projections based on SCAN's Analysis

Using its estimates of educational requirements for jobs, SCAN projects that nearly half (about 45 percent) of all job openings in the next 10 years will be in the broad occupational categories that are mostly middle-skill. Another 33 percent will be in the high-skill occupational categories, with the remaining 22 percent in the low-skill (service) occupations.

SCAN projects that Malaysia's net growth in professional and managerial jobs as well as in service jobs will exceed net growth in middle occupational categories. But steady growth in the middle categories is still expected. For example, net job growth in the broad fields of transportation, construction, and maintenance/repair is projected at 11 to 12 percent over the next decade, only slightly below expected average growth for all jobs (12.9 percent).

The projections for detailed occupations point to average or above-average growth in several high-wage job categories that require education and training at the middle level.

All in all, these projections demonstrate that ample employment opportunities will remain in a variety of good-paying jobs in the middle of the labor market over the next decade and beyond.

Sarawak's Future Supply of Skills

Using education as a proxy for skills, SCAN's projections indicate a slowdown in the growth of skills over the next two decades, at both the top and middle of the labour market. In fact, the slowdown in growth among workers with some college education exceeds the slowdown among workers with a bachelor’s degree or more.

This slowdown might not fully materialize, for some reasons such as; if more educated workers choose to retire, if more young people or adults choose to attend college or participate in long-term training, or if more highly educated Malaysians enter Sarawak (perhaps due to changing immigration laws). But some slowdown in educational growth is almost certain to occur.

Another consideration is that educational attainment patterns may understate skill mismatches because of the limited numbers who qualify for specific occupations in high demand. Openings for registered nurses, for example, are expected to jump dramatically over the next 10 to 15 years. Having enough workers with general education at the BA or sub-BA level will do little to meet the increasing demand for nurses unless enough workers obtain the relevant occupational qualifications. Without initiatives to better link the emerging occupational requirements with the education and training obtained by current and future workers, employers will have to import workers or alter their production strategy in ways that may eliminate potentially good jobs.

Policy Implications for The New Sarawak State Government

All these means that the new Sarawak state government under Pakatan Rakyat will need to develop new economic, human capital and education policies that are seamless aligned towards generating sustainable livelihood and better income for Sarawakians.

Complementing government policies, employers will adjust to tight labor markets in a variety of ways - such as with higher wages, more aggressive recruitment, and more selective screening. They will likely also invest more in training. But these investments take time and significant resources.

Furthermore, private sector training investments by firms are often limited by a variety of market failures that lead to suboptimal investments, especially among less-educated workers. These market failures include imperfect or asymmetric information between employers and employees, liquidity constraints in capital markets, and wage rigidities that prevent employers from financing training partly through lower wages. Another reason for under-investment is that employers who train workers fear they will be unable to recoup their investment if other firms hire workers away once they are trained, Under-investments in employer-led training seem to plague less-educated workers.

These market failures might lead to lowered worker performance and productivity in some sectors in the absence of sound policy responses. And the education and earnings levels of disadvantaged workers will also remain below the levels that could have been achieved with appropriate policy measures. The likely short supply of workers in several key sectors offers opportunities to improve the earnings of disadvantaged workers. In particular, low-income kampong youth or adults can raise their earnings substantially and fill many middle-level jobs by undertaking training and post-secondary education. The result will be to improve efficiency and equity in the labor market.

How might this be accomplished? For the kampong or rural youth - especially those in school - it means expanding opportunities for high-quality career and technical education. Options include career academies or vocational training schools, which have demonstrated positive impacts on the earnings of youth and especially rural young men. Other options include technical schools and “Career Pathway” models, which provide ladders into certain well-paying occupational clusters based on school curricula and work experience, beginning in secondary school (or earlier) and continuing into post-secondary education.

For adults, effective approaches involve supplementing education or training, with enhanced links to employers in sectors with strong growth in middle-skill jobs. These approaches should include job search and follow-up services. Often, community or technical colleges, as well as private career colleges, can deliver the relevant education and training.

Labor market intermediaries can play a useful role in coordinating these components and developing connections with employers through “sectoral” training or “career ladders” that attach rural and disadvantaged adults to these sectors and provide pathways of instruction qualifying them for specific occupations and industries. To be effective, intermediaries sometimes must offer stipends during the period of study, as well as child care, transportation, and job placement services. Financial enhancements afterwards might still be needed to incent these workers to remain attached to the labor market.

Expanding apprenticeships is a particularly attractive option for upgrading the careers of both young and experienced workers. Apprenticeship training culminates in career-related and portable credentials that are recognized and respected by employers. It relies mostly on learning in context, an effective method for teaching technical and broader skills, such as communication and problem-solving.

Workers earn salaries during their training, which is particularly appealing to kampong and disadvantaged adults and youth. Sarawak's and even Malaysia's apprenticeship system is underdeveloped relative to systems in other countries, and very few Sarawakian workers are registered with any apprenticeship system. The new Sarawak state government will need to develop and fund an effective apprenticeship system.

How might these and other education and training efforts be financed? Establishment of an occupational training fund would be an important first step. The fund covers occupational training at accredited colleges only for rural youth and disadvantaged workers. One approach would be to allow the fund to provide grants to extend to shorter term training programs and to finance the classroom instruction used in registered apprenticeship programs.

Another option is to use federal government funds from the PTPTN to finance training, an approach that may require changes in how occupational training counts towards the PTPTN application requirements.

Establishment of specific funding to help finance programs for rural and disadvantaged adults. This funding could be accomplished through formula funding or through a new competitive grants program. In this proposal, grants would be awarded to districts to build comprehensive “advancement systems” for the rural kampongs that focus on education and training, pathways that link private employers to training providers and workers, and appropriate financial supports and services. The grants would match new local council or district expenditures and require a great deal of rigorous evaluation. Financial incentives would also be provided for strong performance and for taking programs to scale at the state level (that is, making them large enough to affect earnings outcomes of a substantial share of workers).

These developments must be done together with and in consideration of the development of rural industries.

Whatever exact paths are taken, the labour market data reviewed by SCAN suggest that demand for workers in the middle of the skill distribution will remain quite strong for the foreseeable future, and that policies designed to train more rural and disadvantaged youth and adults for these jobs are a good bet.

Note:
This paper is developed by SCAN for leaders and members only. Data used in the development of this paper have been taken and analysed from government publications such as the Ninth Malaysia Plan (9MP) and Dept of Statistics publications. Information provided here are SCAN's analysis.

Growing Pains for Greater Gains

PR’s chain of trouble from weak link
Source: The Star Online
By BARADAN KUPPUSAMY

After one year, Pakatan Rakyat’s dilemma is that ‘little brother’ PKR is using by-elections as a way of winnowing unwanted representatives, something that does not sit too well with DAP and PAS.

THE resignation of besieged former Penang Deputy Chief Minister I Mohammad Fairus Khairuddin as Penanti assemblyman has forced yet another by-election.

As it is, voters are already suffering from election fatigue after five straight by-elections since the March 8, 2008 general election.

Like the April 7 Bukit Selambau by-election, the upcoming Penanti by-election was brought about by the resignation of the assemblyman, in this case Fairus at the behest of the party’s top leadership.

PKR de facto leader Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim is being forced to use by-elections as a way of getting rid of unwanted assemblymen who in one way or another have been an embarrassment to the PKR and the Pakatan Rakyat coalition.

When two PKR assemblymen in Perak were charged with corruption, the party defended and continued to keep them as exco members, a lapse that led to their defection and Pakatan’s subsequent loss of Perak.

PKR learnt quickly from that disaster.

When V. Arumugam, the former Bukit Selambau assemblyman, was caught in an embarrassing “bigamy” scandal, he was ordered to resign to force a by-election which PKR’s S. Manikumar won.

The PKR is taking the same route with Fairus, who resigned as deputy Chief Minister on April 8 following corruption investigation, to ensure that he vacates the seat for a more credible candidate.

In the case of the Bukit Lanjan state seat in Selangor, PKR has decided to keep Elizabeth Wong after she had resigned on Feb 17 over controversial pictures of her that surfaced on the Internet.

While Wong, who is well qualified for her job, is seen as a victim of blackmail, Arumugam and Fairus are looked upon as weak and ineffective and having compromised themselves and the party.

Nevertheless, using by-elections as a way to “clean up” the PKR can only work so far.

The danger is that an election fatigued public, worried that the politicking would drag the country down at a time of mounting economic woes, could hand PKR a defeat.

The fear of loss and election fatigue are reasons why the DAP and PAS were reluctant to engineer another by-election to save face for the PKR.

But the die is cast now and they have to toe the line taken by Pakatan supremo Anwar and prepare for yet another by-election.

The Pakatan dilemma is that PKR is the weak link in the year-old coalition.

While PAS and the DAP are able to hold on to their elected representatives and ensure compliance, the PKR is often hit by one scandal after another.

The reason is that the PKR, being the new kid on the block, is still finding its feet and shedding unwanted baggage accumulated during the reformasi era.

Engineered by-elections is also a tactic the PKR likes because it keeps their supporters bound together and in a fighting mood – a siege mentality going back to the reformasi era when the party was under constant attack.

In the case of the older and wiser DAP and PAS, their priorities are to better administer the states under their charge, deliver on the election promises and prepare for the long haul.

For PKR, the priority is immediate and bound with the future of Anwar and his dream to be Prime Minister.

In Penang, Anwar’s dilemma is that after Fairus, the two remaining Malay PKR assemblymen – executive councillor and Batu Maung assemblyman Abdul Malik Abdul Kassim and Sungai Bakap assemblyman Maktar Shapee – are seen as unacceptable for the Deputy Chief Minister 1 post.

Abdul Malik is said to be the main force behind Fairus’ resignation and giving him the post would be seen as rewarding political backstabbing, says a national PKR leader.

“Besides he is not on good terms with Penang PKR chief Datuk Zahrin Mohd Hashim,” said the leader.

The issue is further complicated as Zahrin, who is Bayan Baru MP, wants Fairus’ job.

The other candidate Maktar is “simply not cut out for the job,” say top PKR leaders.

As in Arumugam’s case, Anwar has decided to resolve the issue by forcing a by-election. He hopes to field a more credible Malay candidate, win and move on.

This method is tricky not just because of election fatigue but also because PKR, being a multi-racial party, has other options.

It can make a temporary sacrifice and pick a non-Malay PKR assemblyman as deputy Chief Minister 1 until a more credible candidate is fielded in the next general election.

Deputy Chief Minister 2 Dr P. Ramasamy has repeatedly said that “he represents all voters, not just Indians”.

This kind of thinking is real multi-racialism in which the PKR could show the way.

But now that a by-election is inevitable, voters, whether they like it or not, will be subjected to another bout of politicking at a time when the national focus should be on the mounting economic woes.

Invest In Innovation, Not 12 Dams

More important than spending money on 12 new dams in Sarawak is really the need to invest in innovation. Sarawakians concerned with the well-being of the future generations to come must seriously think about what is really needed. Otherwise, we continue to become a liability to the future generations.

I am recommending that the hottest stimuli for Sarawak's future prosperity is investment in innovation, not in another dam. Failure to do so, future Sarawakians will be beggars in their own land despite the wealth of natural resources today. Because besides Korea, Japan and Taiwan, China & India will be important centers of innovation in the coming decades, leaving Sarawakians to live on scraps in the region.

Not only are both China & India producing a rising share of key technological innovations, but they are also pioneering innovations in business models that allow their companies to prosper in low-income markets. These new models tend to be capital light while heavily leveraging technology. The companies employing them produce goods and services at surprisingly low cost and use the vast scale of home markets to create new technology standards. These are practices that companies in neighboring nations will need to watch closely as they attempt to grow their competitiveness and as they meet new competitors from both countries in global markets.

Education levels are rising in both countries. China and India have world-class technical universities and produce a steady flow of talent at the top of the world’s academic pyramid. In addition, both cultures reward entrepreneurial risk taking. Innovators in China and India possess immense drive and desire to succeed. Their commitment and focus on business execution make them notable entrepreneurs on the global stage. It helps that both China and India allow successful people to retain much of the wealth they create, though both governments expect contributions back to broader society from those who become millionaires or even billionaires.

What is the situation in Sarawak? Firstly, our education system is failing us, educating us out of our inherent creativity. As the government builds infrastructure in the rural areas, GDP growth remains in the urban. Indigenous technologies is unheard of, not even in the farming or timber sectors which are the main economic activities in the state. In Sarawak, revenues from natural resources can be allocated to the benefit of seeding innovations rather than being pocketed by a few individuals.

India's flexible local entrepreneurs are creating new models that bake in low-income levels. ICICI Bank is a good example. Making intensive use of technology, it has created a banking model with capital outlays that are one-tenth those of banks in the developed world. ICICI reaches deeply into India’s rural areas using mobile ATMs and simplified Internet banking. It runs a booming and profitable business in remittances at fee levels that undercut Western Union by 70 percent. Health Management Research Institute (HMRI), meanwhile, uses technology to revolutionize medical services. Paramedics rove through rural areas in vans coordinated by GPS. Routine ailments can be efficiently diagnosed with the help of algorithms; more difficult diagnoses can be provided by remote medical experts via a video kiosk in each van. HMRI can already serve over 50 million patients.

China selects and invests in what it believes are next-generation sectors—biotechnology, electric vehicles, and clean energy. These are markets where China’s domestic demand could lead the world. The government’s goal is to accelerate the market’s development and nurture national champions. In telecom, where the Chinese market is already one of the world’s largest, the government is encouraging national standards that it hopes will eventually define the global industry.

Can Sarawak build & sustain China's & India's innovation pace and eventually move to the next level of technological innovation? Absolutely. The talent is there, as are capital and effective new government that encourages it. With stronger protection and rewards for intellectual property — a likely development as international companies begin to license technology from Sarawakian entrepreneurs — the stage will be set for the next step forward.

Sarawak must wake up to the realization that investing in innovation is more critical than the 12 dams. The most innovative countries — which will also be the highest earning in the future — will be those that embrace a model of “innovation economics,” which places technology, innovation, and entrepreneurship at the center of economic policymaking. Successful nations will not be content to wait for innovation to happen or expect it to occur as a byproduct of other activities, such as rural development or dam building.

On the contrary: the new leaders will search out innovation and actively create an environment that nurtures it. That is the job description of Sarawak's new leaders when Pakatan Rakyat takes over from BN.

Sources: Alessi, IDEO, NASSCOM, ADB, Global Institute for Human Capital Development

BN Admits To Keeping Sarawak Lagging Behind

As reported by Bernama on April 2, Barisan Nasional admits that Sarawak lags behind in socio-economic development.

Bernama reported that PRS Information Chief Datuk Joseph Salang, who is Deputy Energy, Water and Communications Minister, said Dayak voters would be unwittingly doing the state a disfavour they elect PKR.

"We may have to give up on our immigration autonomy. This will open the floodgates for professionals from the peninsula to zero in on the employment and business opportunities in the state.

"I am not against them but they are already more prepared in comparison. We still lag behind them in certain fields," he said.

So how is it that we still lag behind despite our vast natural resources? Yeah, how is it that after nearly 30 years of Taib Mahmud's rule, we still lag behind? How is it that many highly skilled Sarawakian professionals continue to work in other countries because they can't find challenging jobs in their own state?

Yes, certainly Barisan Nasional and Taib Mahmud has ensured that Sarawak continues to lag behind. Perhaps because BN does not want clever people around so that Taib Mahmud can continue to plunder Sarawak's wealth and no one will be clever enough to question his evil doings.

Former Julau MP and PRS supremo Datuk Sng Chee Hua three para statements in today's STAR page 10....denied that he has been working against the BN in Btg Ai by election.
He even added that he is a BN man and believe the BN will deliver the seat.

And in what could be a last minute ditch to save their political platform, a group of SNAP CEC members led by Ting Ling Kiew met Dpm Dato Seri Najib in Putra Jaya at 11.30 am yesterday to declare their support for BN in Btg Ai... claiming that majority of the 16 member CEC members were with them.

As i see it...... both are die hard gamblers, opportunist and political brokers.

A) Datuk Sng Chee Hua lobbied and bet to get Jawah Gerang as candidate for Btg Ai and succeeded in convincing Dato Anwar on ground that he will take care of Jawah's campaign needs from finance to manpower and to logistic. Of course there was also this four points criterias and indicators such as personality, popularity, political maturity and financial independency of which jawah had it all as opposed to NB.
He may have won his bet!
Then come the big bet on who he wants to win.... who would he bet for?
What was he doing in De Palma hotel and Quality hotel in K.L, Grand Continental hotel in Kuching and in restaurants here and there whereever Dato Anwar is around?
Is money such a powerful leverage in any political party nowadays?

B) Ting Ling Kiew.... spoke at length with my friend of his desires and lusts to topple the president of SNAP claiming he had the backing of an individual connected to pehin seri and that individual would pump in Rm30 million, if he becomes president. As the new president he would then bargain for 16 state seats within PR.
This discussion was held at Park Royal hotel in K.L sometime in december last year where he checked in as a Datuk and accorded a datuk's treatment.

Remenber the "dalang" in the fall of the PBS govt in 1994 and the eventual deregistration of PBDS and the near deregistration of PRS.

How much would Sng make from the betting and Ting must have gotten from Najib for their act as political brokers.... lets all guess