Abolish JPA scholarships for undergraduates

RM500,000. That's approximately the amount of money which JPA spends to send one scholar overseas to study in the US or the UK. It probably costs a bit less to send a scholar to Australia but not by much. But the sad fact is that the % of JPA scholars who come back to Malaysia and work for the government in some capacity or another is close to 0%. Given that this is the case, JPA has two choices: (1) drastically reduce the number of JPA scholarships given out (2) implement a comprehensive system of making sure that JPA scholars come back and serve out their bonds in one capacity or another. I would go for option (1) given that (2) is very difficult to implement and carry out, at least in the short term. In other words, why waste RM500,000 on a scholar who is not likely to serve the government or even to come back to Malaysia?

This issue has often been discussed in this blog but I have to flog it again because once again, I've noticed that many of my friends who have received JPA scholarships or loans have not decided to return to Malaysia to serve out their bond. In one sense, I shouldn't blame them because:

(i) JPA does not make an effort to look for decent jobs for them
(ii) Even if JPA plugs them into the civil service, they will die of boredom because there is no specific program within the JPA which is specially catered for JPA scholars
(iii) JPA does not chase after them to repay their bonds / value of their scholarship (unlike for those who have borrowed money under the PTPN)

As the costs of an overseas education continues to soar, I really don't see the value of sending JPA scholars overseas for an undergraduate degree after which they are not compelled to come back to repay their bonds with a length of public service of some sort. You'd never see the Singapore government allow any of their PSC scholars and other GLC scholars given this luxury even though they probably could afford it more than the Malaysian government.

If the JPA cannot introduce some sort of human resource management program that is equivalent to a management trainee program for JPA scholars, then it is better for them to cut down the number of JPA scholars at the undergraduate level drastically. After all, how much does Malaysia benefit from spending half a million ringgit to send a scholar to Oxford or Cambridge who most likely won't return to Malaysia or even if they do, won't work for the government? It is likely that many of these bright young individuals would be able to find alternative sources of funding to go to Oxford or Cambridge. Even if they cannot afford to go to Oxford or Cambridge, it is no great loss (either to themselves or to the country) if they were to take a less expensive option such as doing a 2 + 1 or studying at Nottingham or Monash in Malaysia.

If they stay back in Malaysia, they will still be able to contribute to the economy. There is nothing which states that an Oxford or Cambridge graduate will contribute more to the economy compared to a Monash or Nottingham graduate.

In my opinion, I think it is much more cost effective and it would yield higher returns for the JPA money to be diverted towards sponsoring scholars at the Masters or PhD levels. Many of these scholars would be those currently studying or teaching in the public universities. And there is already a system in place whereby these scholars who get sponsored to go overseas are bonded and have to come back to their 'home' university to teach and serve out their bond. It is much less likely that the money spent on a PhD student, which works out to be about the same as sponsoring an undergraduate, will be wasted in a similar manner. It will also fulfill the government objective of raising the number of PhDs in our public universities.

This doesn't mean that the process of awarding of the PhD sponsorships should not be cleaned up and made more transparent. I've been a keen advocate of making that process more transparent in previous posts. Diverting resources in this manner would allow more deserving and capable scholars in our public universities to pursue their PhD programs abroad.

I know many parents and students will object to this proposal. But given that the money spent on undergraduate JPA scholars goes down the drain, at least from the perspective of returns to the country, I think that these objections are not very tenable.

In the meantime, I'd be interested to hear what our readers have to say about this!