No More Scholarship For Studying Overseas

My title for this entry may sounds harsh and could make any hopeful students worried, but the real situation is actually not that severe. The Public Service Department (PSD) is not entirely stopping giving out their scholarship but their scholarships will be given for those undergraduates who will be studying at local universities or postgraduates studies. If you would like to have a PSD scholarship at undergraduate level, you must get an offer from top universities in the world such as Harvard, Cambridge or Oxford, which I doubt will be easy as other foreign universities due to their extreme high standards and quota.

The original article can be found here.

Now, let us reflect this kind of action taken by the current government. Is is fair to stop giving out scholarships to study abroad? I mean, the scholarships are actually taxes payed diligently by citizens of Malaysia every year. So, is it fair for the government to handle the people's money this way? Is this action considered as depriving the bright children from getting better quality of education abroad?

Every year, about 1500 bright students will get the PSD scholarship to study abroad. But it seems that this number is not enough as we will always see complaints from unsatisfied parents who thinks that their child supposed to get it. To tell you the truth, I think this incidence will happen every year because the number of 'intelligent' students are increasing day by day - blame it on the advanced technology and workbooks! 'Intelligent' here for me actually refers to student nowadays who are just memorizing past years questions and then expect to get an 'A' for every subjects. Not much of a thinker. So, let's just stop the scholarship and no one will get to study abroad. And no students who just memorized all their way get to fly overseas. It's much fairer that way.

And then, people might say that the number of universities in Malaysia is not enough. I think now there are many universities in our own country who could cater the needs of education for our own students. Lets say that most of the students in this nation wants to read medicine. Before this, there were only like 5 universities which offer this course, thus places are limited and highly competitive. But now, there are more medical schools than that - we now have IMU, CUCMS, MSU, AIMST and much more. Hence, the number of places is not a problem anymore.

There are still out there who might associates studying in a foreign university with a much more glamorous status. Yes, I admit studying oversea brings much attention to me. But that is only if this case is being looked by lay-minded people. The new generations now must have been aware that it doesn't matter where your degree comes from, but it is the passion and desire in the profession that matters. Maybe this action of stopping giving out the scholarships will shattered the dreams of many students who dreamt of playing snow during winter or travel around Europe, but it is for the betterment of the future. Besides, if you want to play in the snow, or go on a eurotrip, you can always do that whenever you have worked. It's much more worth it. Trust me ;)