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Malaysian pride: Tan, who is from Muar, was appointed to the most senior technology position at Nasa recently. – nasa.gov
NASA Engineer Florence Tan presented a Maniac Lecture entitled, "From Malaysia to Mars." Florence talked about her journey from Malaysia to NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, where she has been working on planetary mass spectrometers, which is characterized by challenges, frustration, excitement, and rewards.
Only with the application of inclusiveness will retain our best workforce.
EVERY time we read about Malaysians making a mark globally in their respective fields, pride and joy course through our veins knowing these people have elevated our country’s standing.
Recently, that proverbial uplifting news featured six young Malaysians acquiring seats in the prestigious Harvard University for the class of 2026.
The students received offers of admission amidst stiff competition from a global applicant pool of 61,220 students, it was reported.
Last week, another piece of good news surfaced. A Malaysian from Muar, Johor, Florence Tan, was appointed Deputy Chief Technologist at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (Nasa) – the most senior technology position.
She had left Malaysia at 18 to study in the United States, and then started to work with Nasa, beginning as an intern at one of its research centres.
When I read those two stories, I couldn’t help pondering if the six Harvard students would return to Malaysia someday, perhaps after gaining experience in the US and other countries.
And what can Tan really do in Malaysia, even if she chose to return home? After all, we can’t cater to her expertise, experience and skill in
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But more and more, when we read of these high achievers, the media is compelled to refer to them as “Malaysia-born,” which is a euphemism for Malaysians who have emigrated overseas and are not nationals of our country any longer.
At least we’re sure that two legendary Malaysians of global repute, Hollywood actress Tan Sri Michelle Yeoh and shoe designer Datuk Jimmy Choo are hanging on to their Malaysian passports.
Unfortunately, Malaysia is one of the countries most affected by brain drain, as it faces a major problem in not only being incapable of delivering the required talent, but also in failing to retain the current local talent or attracting foreign ones, as a report in cs.stanford.edu put it.
The World Bank defines brain drain as the migration of talent across borders, which has an impact on Malaysia’s aspiration to become a high-income nation.
“Human capital is the bedrock of the high-income economy. Sustained and skill-intensive growth will require talent going forward.
“For Malaysia to be successful in its journey to high income, it will need to develop, attract, and retain talent. Brain drain does not appear to square with this objective: Malaysia needs talent, but talent seems to be leaving.
“Brain drain is a subject of intense debate and controversy, but surprisingly few studies have characterised the phenomenon in the Malaysian context – be it in terms of magnitude, impact, or policy response.
“What complicates matters further are the statistical discrepancies that limit the quality, availability, timeliness, and comparability of international migration data,” wrote its senior economic advisor Philip Schellekens.
He quoted the World Bank’s Malaysia Economic Monitor saying that the Malaysian diaspora – the group of skilled and unskilled Malaysia-born women, men and children living overseas – is estimated conservatively at one million worldwide as of 2010.
“A third among these represent brain drain – those with tertiary education among the diasporas. This is not to suggest that others are not ‘brainy’, but educational attainment is the only available proxy that is consistently available across recipient countries.
“To put the numbers in perspective, two factors are important: the size of the skills base and the profile of immigration.
“Because of the narrow skills base, brain drain is intense in Malaysia and is further aggravated by positive selection effects, as the best and brightest leave first.
“Further, brain drain is not alleviated by compensating inflows, since migration into Malaysia is mainly low-skilled with some 60% with primary education or less and the number of high-skilled expats has fallen by a quarter since 2004.”
As of 2019, there are 952,261 Malaysians or Singaporeans of partial or full Malaysian origin residing in Singapore. And including the permanent population in the country, about 350,000 Malaysians cross the Johor-Singapore Causeway daily to commute to work or school.
Australia is another popular choice for Malaysians, with 177,460 people living there in 2020, according to a report, while the 2016 census from the Australian Bureau of Statistics reveals that 138,364 Malaysians became permanent residents or citizens.
There’s nothing wrong with us continuing to look for low-skilled labour for our oil palm estates, restaurants and homes – many West Asian countries are in the same predicament. However, Malaysia needs to embrace the global mobility of talent, too.
For a start, we must admit that the biggest criteria are the differences in earnings, career prospects, opportunities, professional exposure and quality of life.
The elephant in the room for many Malaysians is the discontent with our country’s affirmative policies, particularly among the non-bumiputras who see their chances of climbing up the ladder hampered by their ethnic origin.
The painful truth is, many talented non-bumiputras, especially the Chinese, make up the bulk of the diaspora.
In all fairness, the government, via Talent Corporation Malaysia, has developed many initiatives to encourage Malaysians to return, but a better carrot needs to be dangled.
Singapore, one of the best-run countries, has the same problem as it faces a challenge to retain quality citizens because the country’s brain drain rate is higher than the global average with six in 10 Singa-poreans willing to leave the country in pursuit of a better job, according to a Randstad Workmonitor research report.
The study revealed that the brain drain rate in the Lion City is higher than the global average of 50%. It’s also higher than Hong Kong’s 56%, but slightly lower than Malaysia’s 66%.
It said 68% of Singaporean workers, aged between 18 and 34 years old, are willing to pack up and leave their country.
In many ways, ethnic Chinese, like their forefathers, are a migratory race, regardless of their nationalities, with many selecting Canada and Australia as their choices during the last 20 years, according to statista.com
In 2013, the United States and Canada became the countries with the highest immigration rate of millionaires from China, according to Hurun Research Institute.
China is reportedly one of the world’s largest emigration countries as well as the country with the biggest outflow of high net worth individuals between 2003 and 2013. Likewise for many Hong Kongers and Taiwanese.
Our politicians love to use the term “world class” when they talk about Malaysia, but we need to really walk the talk or else it remains hollow and unconvincing. If we’re indeed top of the heap, we should be getting top notch workers queueing up to work here.
Wong Chun Wai began his career as a journalist in Penang, and has served The Star for over 35 years in various capacities
and roles. He is now group editorial and corporate affairs adviser to the group, after having served as group managing director/chief
executive officer.On The Beat made its debut on Feb 23 1997 and Chun Wai has penned the column weekly without a break, except for the occasional press holiday when the paper was not published. In May 2011, a compilation of selected articles of On The Beat was published as a book and launched in conjunction with his 50th birthday. Chun Wai also comments on current issues in The Star.
One thing is clear, whilst the quantity of educated manpower is critical to national strength, quality may matter more.
Parents quarrel about the quality of education for their kids, just as societies are deeply divided on education as it defines the future.
Is the current education system fit for purpose to cope with a more complex, fractious future, fraught with possible war?
According to Stanford University’s Guide to Reimagining Higher Education, 96% of university chief academic officers think that their students are ready for the workforce, where only 11% of business leaders feel the same.
As the population and work force grow, the gap between skills demanded by employers and the education received by school leavers is widening, so much so that many are finding it hard to get the jobs that they want.
As technology accelerates in speed and complexity, the quality of education becomes more important than ever. Is it for the elites or the masses?
The Greek philosopher Aristotle recognised that the aim of education is for knowledge, but there was always a different view as to have knowledge for the individual or whether education must prepare the individual to fulfil the needs of society.
Feudal systems hardly paid attention to the masses, whereas most ancient institutes of higher learning were for elites, either for religious orders or in Chinese history, to prepare for civil or military service, but blended with self-cultivation.
Conservative think tank American Enterprise Institute (AEI) has just produced a fascinating study on the implications of higher education for national security.
Covering the period 1950-2040, the study acknowledged that the United States attained uncontested power status, because it had the highest levels of educational attainment and manpower.
In 1950, the United States, with less than 5% of the world’s population, had 45% share of world population aged 25 to 64 with completed tertiary education.In comparison, India had 5% and China about half of that.By 2020, the United States’ share had dropped to roughly 16%, whereas China was catching up, whilst India had just under 10%.By 2040, depending on different estimates, China may double its share to between 15% and 20%, whereas India would have overtaken the United States with 12%, leaving the United States third with 10%.
It is a truism that education matters for economic growth and power.Every additional year of schooling for children is estimated to add 9% to 10% increase in per capita output.
If you add in “business climate” with improvements in education, health and urbanisation, these factors explain five-sixths of differences in output per capita across countries.
Under the liberal world order, America encouraged the spread of global education, so much so that the global adult illiteracy (those without any schooling) fell from 45% in 1950 to only 13% by 2020.
This worldwide expansion in education was good for the world, but it also reduced the comparative advantage of the education and technology front-runners, particularly the United States.
The AEI study reported that the share of global adult population with at least some tertiary education increased from under 2% in 1950 to 16% today and would approach 22% by 2040.
In 1950, eight of the top 10 largest national highly educated working age labour pool was in advanced countries. By 2020, their share was half.
By 2040, this is likely to be only three out of 10.
In essence, India and China would take the lead in total highly trained manpower, especially in science and technology, with the United States “an increasingly distant third place contestant.”
The AEI study illustrates why increasingly American universities will be more selective in their future foreign student intake, especially in science and technology which may have impact on national security matters.
As late as 2017, MIT manifested global ambitions in its strategic plan, “Learning about the world, helping to solve the world’s greatest problems, and working with international collaborators who share our curiosity and commitment to rigorous scientific inquiry.”
That global vision may be cut back in light of the growing geopolitical split into military blocs. Western universities may no longer be encouraged to train foreign students into areas where they can return to compete in key technologies.
In short, geopolitical rivalry will determine the future of resources allocated to education, research and development and technology.
No country can afford liberal education in which every student is encouraged to do what he or she wants to do.
Students today want to be more engaged in the big social issues, such as climate change and social inequality.
But at the same time, they expect more experiential immersion into careers that are more self-fulfilling.
Instead, institutes of higher learning are forced by economics to provide more shorter term courses to upgrade worker skills, using new teaching methods and tools, especially artificial intelligence, virtual reality etc.
At the national level, governments will push universities into more research and development and innovation to gain national competitiveness, including R&D on defence and national security sectors.This means that the education pipeline or supply chain will also be bifurcated like global supply chains that are being disrupted and split by geopolitics.
The conversation on what should go into the curriculum for education is only just beginning. Much of this is to do with funding.
As higher levels of education are more expensive, especially in the high technology area, whilst governments budgets are constrained, universities will turn to private sources of funding.
The more society polarises, the more likely that such funding would turn towards entrenchment of vested interests, rather than solutions to structural problems.
Education is controversial precisely because it is either a unifying social force or a divisive one.
One thing is clear, whilst the quantity of educated manpower is critical to national strength, quality may matter more.
The Soviet Union had the second largest share of educated manpower during the Cold War, but it did not save it from collapse.
Will our future education system provide leaders who are able to cope with the complexities of tomorrow?
As the poet T S Eliot asked in his poem “The Rock” in 1934, “where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?”
That question is being asked not just in universities, but by society as a whole.
Andrew Sheng writes on global issues from an Asian perspective. The views expressed here are the writer’s own.
