JPA Quota Revised

This is pretty big news. I'm sure many of your readers would have read about how the JPA ethnic quota has been changed from 90% Bumi / 10% Non-Bumi to 55% Bumi and 45% Non-Bumi. It was announced by Nazri Aziz, Minister in the PM's department sometime last week. The responses have been coming in thick and fast. I'm sure that this will not be the first time we will tackle this issue on this blog. Tony would have other insights and opinions. But let me fire off the first salvo.

First of all, I'm not exactly elated or jumping for joy at this news, contrary to expectations. Why? I've said many times in this blog that I think that as long as JPA doesn't effectively bond the overseas JPA scholars to Malaysia, I would prefer to JPA overseas scholarship component to be scrapped altogether. It costs Malaysia a few hundred million ringgit a year without any guarantee of returns. Singapore, a far richer country than Malaysia, would never throw hard earned tax dollars at such a scheme which promises very low returns to investment. You can read my previous posts here and here.

So, even if the distribution of this scholarship has become more 'meritocratic' (which I think it will given the new ethnic quota), there is little reason to celebrate if one looks at how our tax dollars are spent in this regard.

That being said, I never thought that I'd see the day when there would be a policy change in such as sensitive area i.e. JPA overseas scholarships. This is a major shift in the thinking of the policy makers, even if it is in one small area of policymaking. For now, I want to avoid the political strategy behind this move (I'll save that for one of my Realpolitik podcasts and Malaysiakini writeu-ps).

If this is an indication that the government is willing to shift the way it make policy especially in the area of higher education and our public universities, then I would certain welcome it.

My underlying assumption here is that the changing of the ethnic quota parallels a move towards moving to a more meritocratic way of policymaking and of promotions and hiring practices, for example. One can argue that this may not necessarily be the case since it is possible that certain Bumis who have better results and so on might lose out to non-Bumis with poorer results. But I think history has shown that most of the time, it was largely qualified non-Bumis who were denied the JPA scholarships rather than the other way round (if not, why have a quota in the first place?).

Hence, there are good reasons to support this policy on meritocratic grounds. Since JPA overseas scholarships won't be abolished anytime soon, I think that this is the best situation one can hope for. (Of course, my preferred solution would be to abolish ethnic quotas completely and offer scholarships on a purely merit base system but this is politically infeasible)

In addition, there is a means tested component now for the JPA overseas scholarships. From what I understand, those scholars who have been shortlisted and whose parents earn less than RM1,500 a month would automatically be awarded the scholarship regardless of race. This is certainly in line with the component of the NEP which is supposed to help the poor in Malaysia, regardless of race. Again, I think that this is something positive.

But one has to recognize that there may be potential costs when one practices means testing. It's something which many people don't want to say because it is not politically correct. Which is if one shortlists top SPM scorers from low income families, the probability of these scholars getting into a top university in the UK or the US is lower than if a top scorer from a middle or upper middle income family were to have been selected.

Before you guys start throwing barbs at me, recognize that I'm stating a well known finding. I'm not saying that someone from a low income family cannot get into a top ranked US or UK university. What I'm saying that the proportion of students who get into these schools who come from middle and upper middle income families is usually higher. If you look at the top schools in the US, even some of the need blind ones and those with very generous financial aid schemes, you'll find that the middle and upper middle income kids form the largest proportion of students. There are many reasons for this - exposure, support from parents, networking effects - which I won't go into but it's something that we should recognize as one of the by products of 'means testing'. Of course, this doesn't mean that many of these kids can't get into a perfectly respectable university. It all depends on what you want the JPA to achieve and who you want it to reward.

I'm flagging this to show the complexity and consequences of different policy decisions. For example, Tony, in a much earlier post, suggested that instead of awarding JPA scholarships after SPM, we should award JPA scholarships after the students have applied to and gotten into a list of pre-approved top ranked universities. This would certainly be much more meritocratic and would award students based on a more explicitly laid out terms and conditions but again, it would be regressive in that it would probably be advantageous to those from middle or upper middle class families. Those who can afford to spend money on books to prepare a student for the SAT not to mention the expensive application process to many of these universities.

Being someone who likes more information rather than less, I think that many of these questions can be partly answered if more information were revealed to researchers, politicians, activists and the public at large. For example, I would love to see the grade distribution of those who obtained the JPA prior to this change in the quota and after the change in the quota. Did the standards for the non-Bumis fall after the quota was relaxed? Did the standards for the Bumis rise for the same reason? Did the means testing have anything to do with this?

What about the kinds of universities and courses which the respective JPA scholars were admitted to? What was the geographical distribution? How many got into top notch universities? Again, what was the correlation between the means tested students and the kinds of universities they got into?

I hope that I've illustrated the complexity involved in trying to evaluate the merits and demerits of such a policy change. The thing that I dislike about certain groups coming out to protest or to support such a policy change is that they only focus on the ethnicity quota issue without delving deeper into some of the other implications such as the poor return on investment, the implications of means testing, the kinds of schools which the scholars get into and the underlying rationale for the JPA (is it to reward good scholars who can get into top schools or those who come from lower income families?). I admit that I'm sometimes guilty of looking at things strictly from a racial lens but I do try not to. And I've certainly tried to in this particular instance.