Utusan Malaysia’s front-page report yesterday under the headline “USM mungkin tutup - Sekiranya pelajar aliran sains berkurangan setiap tahun” has created a national furore in the educational world.
The Utusan Malaysia report had quoted a speech by USM deputy vice chancellor (student affairs) Prof Ghazali Othman that USM faced the danger of being closed as the number of its science students continued to dwindle. He was quoted as saying that at present, 80 per cent of the students at the university were taking arts programmes.
The Education Minister, Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak has responded by declaring that Universiti Sains Malaysia would not be closed just because it failed to attract students pursuing science programmes. He said the government would find ways to increase the number of students taking science programmes.
In Penang, the USM’s acting vice-chancellor, Professor Jamjan Rajikan said that the university would not be closing down. He said the issue of the university’s closure never arose despite the fact that more students preferred the arts stream. He also said that the statement by Ghazali was based on his own assumption, and that the claim that the USM received 80 per cent intake in the arts stream and 20 per cent in science was wrong as it actually referred to the national statistics for schools.
The secretary-general of the Education Ministry, Datuk Dr. Johari Mat also issued a statement, and said that the “whole student enrolment and the USM student enrolment trend in particular has reflected the increasing ratio in the science stream compared with those pursuing arts”.
He said there was a higher USM total enrolment in the science stream, beginning with the 1993/94 session which was 4,754 or 51.7 per cent compared with the 4,439 or 48.3 per cent in the arts stream.
In the 1994/95 session, the science student enrolment increased to 5,135 or 53.3 per cent against the 4,505 or 46.7 per cent for the arts stream, while in the 1995/96 session there was an intake of 5,507 students or 53.8 per cent compared to 4,739 students taking arts.
Ghazali’s concern about the future of USM is not completely misplaced. While USM will not be closed down, it may have to change its name from Universiti Sains Malaysia to Universiti Sastera Malaysia unless there is a concerted national effort to reverse the dwindling interest in science in schools and universities.
According to the Seventh Malaysia Plan, for instance, USM will produce more first-degree arts than science graduates in the five years from 1996-2000, i.e. 9,560 arts graduates as compared to 9,010 graduates for science and technical courses.
Ghazali should be commended if his remarks could ignite a national debate on the declining interest in science, which would have a far-reaching effect on Malaysia’s competitiveness in the international marketplace.
The declining interest in science in the schools and universities also makes a complete mockery of the Second Industrial Master Plan (IMP2) launched by the Prime Minister last Thursday with its emphasis on human resource developoment as one of the five critical elements of economic foundation to focus on the enhancement of skills formation in a hi-tech environment.
In fact, the Education Minister should release all available information and data about the dwindling interest in science in the schools and universities so that there could be a national debate on the issue, and to establish a national consensus to address the problem, as this concerns not just the Education Ministry, but students, parents and the future of the country as well.
The Education Ministry should explain why it had allowed interest in science in schools and universities in the last decade to drop to such a serious level, where only 20 per cent of the total number of Form Four and Five students chose to study pure science subjects when the ideal figure should be 60 per cent. In fact, it is so bad that some schools have only about 10 per cent of their students taking up science course.
Is this a reflection of a serious failure in the national education system, where students come to feel that subjects like physics, biology and chemistry are abstract and are difficult to get good grades, and giving students the widespread perception that it is better to opt for arts as learning science will not help them in their daily lives.
In this connection, the earlier claim by the National Union of Teaching Profession (NUTP) that the declining interest and the poor performance by students in Science in the SPM examination could be attributed to teachers who knew little about the subject, as some teachers teaching science in primary schools had not even passed the subject, is most shocking indeed.
(6/12/96)