LETTER | Stem brain drain now

LETTER | Every year, instead of joy and celebration at scoring top grades in their SPM and STPM exams, high achievers are confronted with sheer disappointment as they receive university offer letters with courses that are not their preferred choice.

Meritocracy in the absolute sense has always been rejected in totality by the authorities under their social engineering agenda. This blanket application of the policy has very serious economic repercussions as we are literally exporting top brains, for the gain of other countries who are only too willing to accept them.

As such, I would like to suggest an approach whereby the top 10 percent of our talented scholars are given their preferred courses of study, and this means that any student with CGPA of 3.6 and above will be a happy future graduate. This will in turn retain talented scholars and inculcate loyalty and patriotism.

We need top doctors, engineers, accountants, economists, IT specialists, biotechnologists, material scientists, physicists, and specialists in other fields to drive the nation forward.

We should learn from Singapore. There is no shame in learning something good. Singapore thrives on talented manpower and sound economic policies, and the latter manifests from people with top brains coupled with sound training.

It is time our leaders wake up and move away from policies that stifle progress and talent development. Lamenting for being backward will not move us forward. We should start by revamping our education curriculum to a more progressive one, including textbooks being used.

The first step is to change our mindset. How can we arrest the rot? We must examine all factors that are stifling the nation’s progress and having done that, adopt a strong political will to do the needful.

A total reset is inevitable if we are serious about catching up with the fast-changing world.

The views expressed here are those of the author/contributor and do not necessarily represent the views of Malaysiakini.