Education and Further Studies Fair

The above fair was held over the weekend at the Mid Valley Exhibition Center and I had the pleasure of attending it. It was certainly an eye opening affair and just confirmed the nation obsession of their children graduating with a Medical Degree. The reason I attended it was because my friend Ramesh was invited to be a guest speaker for the segment on career in digital media. The exhibition occupied a couple of halls at the huge venue and I must say 70% of the exhibit were all things healthcare - both Medical and Nursing, with a smaller segment on hospitality and engineering courses. I remember attending a similar fair around 20 years back, and 70% of the exhibit was on computer courses. Things had certainly came full circle.

I was in T-shirts and unshaven, and a few of the exhibitors asked me if I was interested in signing up for courses as they were doing “discounts” for those attending the fair.

Let me start with the obvious one. It was a private exhibition, and the booths were mainly by private colleges and universities. Some actually offer their own degree while others via a twinning initiatives. Certainly, the machinery was on hyperdrive in justifying the cost of doing the degree locally rather than going abroad. None of the public colleges were featured. All together, there were at least 50 participants. The usual suspects were there - IMU, Monash, Masterskills, Segi and Mahsa. I knew these centers, so I did not spend much time there. Instead, I spent a good hour chatting around with the ‘agencies’. These are local company, specialising in facilitating students finding places at Medical School abroad, mainly in the cheap. Cheap as in, in Indonesia, Russia and Ukraine. There were a few in India as well, but according to them, the Indian colleges have prefer to send their own representatives to Malaysia, and handle the enrollment and acceptance process in house. The pricing were certainly an eye opener. The Royal Perak College of Medicine (under Universiti Kuala Lumpur, which was in turn under MARA), offer the full Medical Degree - previously as MBBS(Mal) for over RM200K. These colleges in Russia would only set you back RM150K.

Check out the prices on offerThis certainly created a lot of excitement, not to mention the looser admission criteria. During my conversation with one of the agent, I spent 60% of the conversation about justifying that the degree will be ‘legal’. I was more interested in the admission criteria, ratio of staff to students, the medium - not all of these were in English, whether the clinical years include interaction with human beings.He then got suspicious and I had to come clean that I was an academician. He then asked for a more senior agent to deal with me. Off the record, the textbook will be in Russian, so you can guess what the medium will be in. The students will be required to do a ‘foundation’ year - in Russia, in order to familiarise themselves with the language. As far as the agent can tell, a credit in the Science subjects at SPM was enough for consideration! I think I shall keep the rest of the conversation off the record as clearly the agent was not comfortable discussing these matters with me.

An example of such 'agency'. This was not the one I talked to.On the subject of what will happen once they graduate, he was a bit more certain. He claimed that currently the degrees were accepted locally by the Malaysian Medical Council. He however conceded that the Ministry has the habit of moving the goalposts, and there will always be a small possibility that the students upon return might need further scrutiny. At the moment, these student were required to sit for the final year exams at a local university - we had a group of about 30 who took the final year exams with us on the last seating at UM. Of these, there were a few very good students, while some, especially from China was not as good. They were allowed to spend a six months period at the university for clinical attachment - at a cost. Some of the student were these degrees were exempted - we have currently a few of these at UMMC.

My advice to those interested in considering these colleges, please check the credentials with the MMC. I tried looking up at their website but I could not find such list. Maybe a quick phone call should do the trick. There were a few good Medical Schools in Russia, but I prefer not to mention them for fear of endorsement. The clue would be in the admission requirements. The easier it was to get in, the more suspect you should be. Good Luck! 

It was raining outside

It looked like it would be raining outside. I just had lunch and was about to leave for Friday Prayers. But with the rain, I may have to give it a rest.

Today would mark the third week that I would be in Kelang teaching my Medical Students. I have another week to go, but it would be the exam week then. So, the students were understandably anxious - Malaysian education system is exam-driven, right from kindergarten to Medical School. We finished our clinical session just now and after another tutorial this afternoon, that would be it for the week. They had another pair of lecturers before me for four weeks, so all together they would have a total 7 weeks of teaching. For the exam next week, I prepared an essay question, as well as organising the clinical examination short cases for each one of them. All 44 of them.

When I first started coming to Kelang back in 2004, there were only 32 students in my class. All of them have graduated, and some of them still kept in touch. It was easy as I enjoy teaching, but 44 students to one lecturer was just way too much. There were too many compromises being made, and in the three weeks I had so far with them, I was sure not all of the students were happy. They had to understand however that I can;t please everyone, not it was my job to please them.

I kept on stressing to the department and the students that my role here in Kelang would be to facilitate teaching. Facilitating does not mean spoon-feeding them with information. As Medicine was such a wide and varied subject, I was not capable, or should be expected to be able to know everything. The pace of the development in Medicine was also very rapid. I read journals just to keep up and it was not easy to stay at the cutting edge of things. But at least the UM Medical Students should be grateful. They have dedicated lecturers who came and taught, them, not only from my department, but from Surgical, Gynaecology and Paediatrics as well. I can name a few other medical schools who struggle to keep up. They may have far too many medical students to cope with and were not able to supervise all of them. Here, at UM, even though we had to struggle at times, we tried our best to keep up and were successful most of the time. But I was not sure how long we can keep up with the 44 to 1 ratio. It was starting to break my back ….. I was worried that we give too much emphasis on quantity rather than quality.

The students complained that they did not have enough teaching. The lecturers complained that it was too much work to do going about teaching these large group. The Management were under pressure to produce more doctors by the powers that be. And I understood that Malaysia needed more doctors in general. The solution here may be very obvious. We need more lecturers. We need more people on the ground. We need to recruit more people. We need to bring the 44:1 ratio down. But there were not too many people to take up the task of being medical lecturers as it took time and commitment to do it well. There were many more easier path to take on to progress in medical career compared to being a lecturer. It was a vicious cycle. But we have to start somewhere and we have to make the job of being a lecturer more attractive.We have to start paying the medical lecturers better salary. Certainly there were move in that direction, but would be enough to make the carrer choice more attractive would it be able to make the career choice more attractive , than say, a chronic MO in Kementerian Kesihatan. I bet some of them were paid more than me doing half the amount of work.

It was raining heavily outside. It looked like that I will be missing my Friday prayers.