Non-payment of loans by older generation hurting future generations

It is a bad time to be a fresh University student in Malaysia today. The National Higher Education Fund Corporation (PTPTN)has announced loan cuts of 5% for students in public institutions of higher learning and 15% for those studying in private institutions of higher learning. This came into effect last weekend.

Apparently the main reason is that many borrowers have not repaid their loans. I know that there is a similar situation in the UK as well. According to PTPN Chairman, Datuk Shamsul Anuar Nasarah, the total PTPTN loan repayment received up to August 31 this year was RM5.37 billion or 45.62% instead of the RM 11.77 billion, the corporation was supposed to receive.

I know a number of fresh graduates either do not have a job or are poorly paid, if they do and they have an excuse. However, I suspect that there are several people earning huge salaries who have not bothered to pay off their debts. I am not sure what are the reason but if you are one of them, please pay off your loans as you are seriously hurting the prospects of future generations.

And for guilty Muslims out there, if you are concerned about the issue of petting dogs, wearing hijab or other current issues, you should be aware that Islam also takes the matter of debt very seriously and Muslims are urged to avoid it as much as possible.

Warwick winter graduation 2012

It was a dream but we finally did it. Both my wife and I graduated together from the University of Warwick. We both studied for our PhD in Marketing (though in different areas) at the Warwick Business School. My wife started one year early and forced me to catch up with her and I actually completed one month earlier than her.

New proposed UK immigration changes

The UK Government is proposing a number of changes in the immigration rules which will have a huge impact on all non-EU foreign students.

Under the main changes which are likely to impact Malaysian and other non-EU foreign students and their dependent include the following:

1. Students will only be allowed to work on campus during the week in term time.

2. Dependants of students will not be allowed to work in the UK unless they get a Tier 2 visa from the employer. Means no more cleaning jobs.

3. Closing down the Post Study Work (PSW) Scheme. means we have to go back as soon as we graduate.

4. Remove right of dependants to come to UK unless the student is on a course of 12 months or more. This may not be relevant to the PhD students, but it will definitely have an impact on those students with family taking a Masters course.

The Government is no carrying out a consultation with various Universities.

Why do Malaysians like to study in the UK?

In 2007 / 2008, there were 12,430 Malaysian students in the UK with 35% enrolled in postgraduate programmes, mainly PhDs (4,375 students) (source: British Council). Most of them are funded by the Malaysian Government. Considering that the average annual fees for a non-EU student in the UK is approximately, £11,00, not counting the cost of living, this is a huge investment on the part of the Malaysian Government.

I was curious as to what is it that makes UK universities so popular with Malaysian students as compared to the US or other countries.

Of course the reason may be that some of the World's best Universities including Oxford, Cambridge and Warwick are located here. However, this does not explain the high number of Malaysian students in other Universities which are not that high ranked as well. A lot of people in Malaysia still consider British education to be the best in the World even though a number of high ranking Universities are in other countries as well. 

It may have something to do with the fact that English is the language spoken here so unlike France, Spain or Germany, you don't have to learn a new language as English is compulsory in Malaysian schools.

However, that's not the only reason and I found out several other facts which contribute to the UK as a popular destination for education., some of which are quite surprising.

An important factor is that foreign students are allowed to work in the UK, limited hours during term time and full time during holidays. Student dependants are allowed to work full time, an important factor considering that the scholarships provided by the Malaysian Government are not really enough to live comfortably. On the other hand, as fas as I know, students are not allowed to work outside the campus and dependent are not allowed at all in the US. Rules in Australia are quite similar to the UK.

There are specific reasons as well. A PhD in the US apparently takes at an average of about 4-5 years to complete whereas in the UK, it's about 3.5 years. If you are in the Business and Managements stream, you also need to get really high GMAT scores in order to get in. This is not true for PhD in business and management studies here in most UK universities.

Some other factors listed by friends:

1. Easier to get Halal food.
2. Cheaper to fly to the UK than to the US.
3. Great shopping specially on boxing day.
4. I also discovered that another reason is the fact that every Malaysian student is entitled to an approved permit (AP) to import a car back into Malaysia with nominal tax rates.Normally foreign built cars are subject to a tax as high as 300%. The UK also drives on the correct side of the road (the left side and cars are right hand drive) as compared to several other countries.

So it is not only the reputation of British universities or because it is cheaper (they are not) but a combination of several factors. I am wondering whether the recent proposal to reduce the number of permitted working hours and that student dependants won't be allowed to work, would have an impact on the numbers coming here to study.

If you are a Malaysian student here in the UK, are there any more reasons you selected the UK?

Thinking of doing a PhD?

Well Don't!

Nah! I am just joking.

I have thoroughly enjoyed the whole process and also hated it, have been ecstatic, depressed and excited in turns and sometimes all at the same time. A PhD is never easy and is a life changing experience. Some had mental breakdowns, miscarriages, breakdown of relationships and some got pregnant (I am not joking). You develop a love-hate relationship with your supervisor and sometimes hate-hate. Only a fortunate few get supervisors that are kind, helpful and considerate.


Ups and Downs

Somehow I have become a guy to contact for prospective PhD students in the Warwick Business School and my weakness is that I always reply to their queries and several of these guys have now started their studies here at the school.  I belive in Karma and sincerely do like helping out people.

The University should actually pay me for my service.

Anyway, I find that the queries are quite similar and it's gets repetitive after a while. After replying to yet another query a couple of minutes ago, I suddenly realised that I could actually have the info up on my blogs and just point them to it. Wonder why I never thought about that.

So given below are some of the key questions to look at before you apply in order to have a better chance of getting into the WBS PhD programme (or any other phD programme for that matter).

1. Is there a gap in research?

For this you will need to read up and see what research has been done
in your area of interest and if there are any gaps in the research that has not been explored. I am not talking of merely changing the context but of gaps in theories. This can be sometimes quite difficult when you are looking at something relatively new - like blogs in my case. Some people commented that being a current topic is great because no body has done it. It is actually problematic because you don't have any or very little research evidence to fall back on to back up your research. It really helps if you are researching a topic you are really interested in because after a while you do get sick of reading about the same things again and again. Fortunately, I am a compulsive blogger and have a deep interest in social media of which, blogs form a very important part.

2. Do you have access to data or subject of study?

This is very important to prove that the research is possible. A number of grand proposals failed because the students simply didn't have access to the data they were looking for. Companies are notoriously difficult to access (naturally) unless you have contact inside.

Thus a good methodology would be required. In other words, how are you going to access and ultimately analyse the data. If you plant to do a quantitative study, it will be helpful to specify the methods and tools you are are going to use to analyse the data.

3. Do you have a prospective supervisor?

Many prospective PhD students make the mistake of applying without looking to see if there is anybody interested in their study. Sometimes a great school doesn't mean that the people are good in your subject area. For example, Warwick Business School may be way better in terms of expertise in a particular suject as compared to Cambridge or Oxford.

There is no point if you have an amazing proposal but no one in the Faculty is interested to take you up as a student. Even if someone is interested,they might not be able to take you up if they already have too many PhD students.

Have a look at the list of experts in your field and approach them directly (via email), providing a brief outline of your proposal. If they respond positively, you can then send in an extended proposal. I even had a chat with my potential supervisor over the phone before I got here.

Once you have covered all the 3 points, you can then proceed with the formal application process.

Finally, do not forget to contact the doctoral programme office in the respective schools with all your queries as well.

My Research Methodology

Just met my second supervisor yesterday and he approved my final research questionnaire with some minor changes. It's now live online at www.surveymk.com//blogs.

With this I am now at the halfway stage of my PhD research work at the Warwick Business School, University of Warwick.

I am actually quite relieved because the first stage is actually the toughest. It took me quite some time to get here because getting the questionnaire right the first time is crucial. A lot of people rush trough their questionnaire development phase of their research and suffer the consequences later.

The first step in starting a research is to have a broad idea of which area you want to research in. For me it was a no-brainer - I wanted to do something related to blogs. However, as I have a marketing background and I am in the business school, I was interested in the marketing aspect of blogs. More specifically on the consumer behaviour related to blog.

Carried out an extensive review of literature and found out that very little research has been carried out on blogs and even less on the marketing aspect of blogs. This was both good and bad news for me. Good because almost anything I do will be new contribution but bad because I had negligible literature to base my research on.

If you are new to research, the first thing you should be aware of is that review of previous literature is absolutely essential. This would allow you to identify the gaps and your potential contribution. You also need previous research to support some of your assumptions and hypotheses.

I had decided from day One that my research should be quantitative in nature and based on a survey questionnaire. Learnt that I fell under the positivist philosophy camp. Most of my friends research here are qualitative in nature. There has been an ongoing battle between the different sides on the best approach to research but I firmly believe that quantitative research is the best. This may be due to my educational background in the biological sciences.

My research looks at the consumer's perception of blogs and as I am looking at consumer attitudes, I rely a lot on several human psychology theories - as are in fact, a lot of marketing studies.

Several conceptual models with various constructs came up and went until we (myself and my supervisor) finally agreed upon one.

This was a really frustrating phase and I did wonder whether it was worth all the mental and financial cost.

These constructs are measured by various statements and are derived from previous studies published in leading marketing and psychology journals. I guess that's why we call it "re-search".

I also conducted some interviews followed by a pilot test. Based on the comments and exploratory factor analysis, I had to drop several statements used to measure the constructs and even drop one completely because I found out that it was actually had wrong measurements and was not reliable. I had taken the scale from a research conducted by some Professors in a top US University. This actually proves that experts do get it wrong sometimes.

Anyway, I am finally here and ready to enter the second stage. If you read blogs regularly, please spend a few minutes to complete my survey.

First Commentator
Daddy Papersurfer

Official blogger and twitterer for the Festival of Social Sciences

The Faculty of Social Science here at the University of Warwick is organising the Festival of Social Sciences, which will run on the campus from the 15th (Monday) to 19th (Friday) June this year. I somehow got involved and am now the official twitterer for the festival.

Do check out the official blog to read about the festival including the preparations, information on events and view pictures, etc.

You can also follow the festival on Twitter @socscifestival.

New UK immigration rules update

There is one industry that is recession proof and some research actually shows that it does better when the economy is bad. I am referring to the billion pound education industry. British universities have been highly successful in attracting thousands of bright foreign students to the British Isles.

A BBC report in 2008 showed that fees from International students amounted to £1.7bn. The Universities are interested in attracting foreign non-EU students because they can charge them higher. In my case I paid approximately £10300 this year and the fees are increasing. Local and EU students only pay one third that amount. In other words I am paying for the cost of two local/ EU students. I don't mind because a degree from a reputed British University is looked on favourably by employers all around the World (at least I hope so).

The Malaysian Government itself spends millions of dollars every year sponsoring the education of thousands of students in institutes of higher learning all over the UK.

However, recent changes in immigration regulations may change all that. First were the requirement to carry biometric identity cards. I didn't mind that even though there were a lot of protests because I am used to carrying an ID card all the time in Malaysia.

Yesterday we received an email from the University informing us of Pending changes to the immigration rules for student visa renewals. Based on the new rules which will be implemented from the 31st of March 2009, students would need to provide evidence of any remaining course fees to be paid plus £600pm (up to a maximum of £1200) living costs for visa extensions of nine months or less. If more than nine months you will need to provide evidence of your first year’s fees plus £1200 living costs.

The most worrying part of the new rule is the part of dependants. Namely the fact that you will need to show evidence of funds to support them. The amount has not been fixed yet but is tentatively £533 (per month) for each dependant (including children).

I guess this is part of their policy to toughen immigration rules and it has got worse since the economic recession started. All of us can feel a deepening anti-foreigner sentiment - from politicians, newspaper articles and even bloggers.

Now we are blamed for all short of problems ranging from health care to employment. This is plain ridiculous. Instead of creating more employment and reducing the number of people on the dole, foreigners are the perfect bogeyman to take the blame for past planning, economic and financial mistakes on the part of the Government.

I do agree that there is a problem of illegal immigrants but the new policies will affect the students legally staying and contributing to the British economy. I guess they are frustrated because they can't do anything about the rest of the Europeans (since the UK is part of the EU) or the illegal immigrants or the asylum seekers.

The ones worst affected will be the PhD research students with families. Officially most PhD courses are supposed to be of 3 years duration and the visa are given accordingly but apart from rare cases, most will extend to the fourth or fifth year. For example, in the Warwick Business School, I don't know of any single student (foreign and local) who has completed their PhD degree in the stipulated 3 years duration. The only guy I know who completed in 3 years in the whole University of Warwick was a Malaysian in the Engineering faculty and he was lucky because all his experiments went as planned. Sometimes it is not even the fault of the students as some supervisors can take their own sweet time in passing the students.

My friend has 4 kids and he has to have approximately £24588 £29385 + (based on the details given to us) in his account in order to extend his study for another 9 months. Failure to do so might mean going back to Malaysia without completing the degree (after 3 long years of research). It's scary.

First Commentator
Hapi

Gaza Protest at University of Warwick

UPDATED: 30 Jan 2009

Had wanted to blog about this earlier but somehow didn't know what to write.

Students here at the University of Warwick have taken over a lecture room (S0.21)in the Social Studies buildings in support of the victims of the conflict in Gaza. They are still there.

Their demands include:

1. Warwick University should suspend all relations with companies which supply the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. This includes BAE Systems, MBDA, GE Aviation, QinetiQ and Rolls Royce.
2. That the University donate old computer equipment and textbooks to universities in Palestine, specifically those that were partially destroyed in Gaza during the current Israeli military operation.
3. That the University fund and provide logistical support for a series of talks on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The University authorities has since moved classes scheduled in the room to other alternative rooms.

Check out The Warwick Solidarity Sit-In site for more info.

There were several other protests here in the campus.

A few days back people going to the Library were shocked to see five student protesters covered in white burial shrouds and lying on the ground with red paint covering them. University security moved in and stopped the "theatrical protest" after someone complained. The five second year Theatre students viewed the event as a performance protest.

Israel has collectively punished the Palestinians in Gaza for the actions of the Hamas and left a Humanitarian crisis.

While I am happy that the bombings have stopped but wonder how long the shaky ceasefire in Gaza will last. The recent outbreak of violence is not the first and has been going on for more than 60 years now. Hamas is still there. Israel still hasn't lifted economic blockade.

It's easy for me to sit here in my comfortable chair writing this but I wonder how the people are faring there in concentration camp Gaza.

Malaysian universities out of the World top 200 list

The Times Higher Education Supplement (THES) - Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) World University Rankings are really taken seriously by a lot of people. Thus the dropping of Malaysian Universities from the top 200 Universities list for the first time since it was first published in 2004, is indeed a big issue, especially among the Malaysian academic community.

The results are based on scores on 6 variables, namely, peer review (40%), employer review (10%), staff- student ratio (5%), citations per staff (20%), international staff (5%) and international students (5%).

Though I am not sure about the other variables, I am totally sure of two where Malaysian Universities will always have low scores: international staff and international student ratios. I guess it is related to the education policy there. Unlike universities in the US, UK or even Australia, majority of the Malaysian Universities are not profit orientated. They do not target foreign students for the undergraduate programmes. Most of the foreign students there are not in the Universities but rather in the various private colleges (many of them now with a unique Malaysian terminology - College Universities) scattered across the Klang Valley of Malaysia.

As for foreign academics, Malaysia is not exactly an attractive destination due to uncompetitive salaries and tough immigration laws. I know of some highly qualified academicians who had worked for more than 10 years in the country but were not given the permanent resident status, don't even talk about citizenship. Totally opposite of policies in the developed countries including Singapore.

Of course the most important factors are peer review followed by citations per staff. The universities definitely need to look at what's keeping the Malaysian academicians from publishing in top rated journals. However, I have no idea how they calculated the peer review thing, so I can't comment.

The report does mention a possible reason behind the fall:

But we suspect that some Malaysian and Singaporean institutions have lost out because of our increased rigour over voting for one’s own university, and there are no Malaysian universities in this top 200.

According to Ben Sowter, QS head of research, “nowhere has keener interest been taken than in Malaysia”.

"National shame" cries the opposition. It has become a political issue and I am sure that some heads will roll.

Read The Star's report: Whither rankings?

University of Bedfordshire Clearing Process 2007

Starting from the 16th of August until 21st of September the University of Bedfordshire is recruiting new undergraduate students to take up courses under its vacancy lists through University of Bedfordshire - Clearing 2007.

If you are interested and would like to know more about studying there, you can call them directly at 0800 013 0925. The university also offers various funding options for UK and EU students.

Making learning fun with Pokemon

Mention maths or science and most kids will start complaining. I may be wrong but I guess one of the reasons is that teachers don't try to make these subjects fun to learn.

The Pokemon Learning League on the other hand, takes a fun approach to education. Based on the popular kid's cartoon show - Pokemon, this educational website is targeted at 8-12 year olds. It was designed by experienced educators and comprises of standards-based, interactive animated lessons in Science, Math, Language Arts and Life Skills topics in a unique interactive way for children in grades 3-6.

Right now they are offered on a subscription basis in both homes and schools. The great news is that you can sign up with the website for month's free trial.

FYI, Pokémon Learning League is a division of Pokémon USA, Inc. It won the 2007 Association of Educational Publishers award for Best Science web site. More features and content will be added to the site every week.

Business coaching site

I subscribe to the idea of lifelong learning. Education doesn't have to end with school or after a degree. Actually I have realized that besides renewing what I already know, I need to take classes to keep myself up to date with the new skills and knowledge to enable me to achieve my personal goals.

I recall that I was in awe of a friend during my MBA. He was a medical doctor who joined the corporate sector and had become the managing director of a group of companies and I wondered why he needed to get an MBA. Later during one of our courses, I learnt of Maslow's 'Hierarchy of needs' and how we move towards self-actualization after we have satisfied our other needs starting with the physiological needs.

There are various educations institutions providing executive-level coaching for individuals and one of the leaders is Prosper, Inc. Started by owners, Ethan Willis and Randy Garn, Prosper, Inc. is a global leader of coaching and distance training and provides mentoring in Real Estate Investing, Stock Market Investing, Business Marketing, E-commerce and Personal Finance.

Here is the LinkedIn profile of prosper learning.

I was quite impressed with the real success stories in the testimonials from former students. I guess this is the reason that they were named as 2005 Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year.

However, it should be noted that membership is by invitation only so if you are interested, contact a Prosper consultant now to find out if you are eligible.

University of Warwick students are the best

Wanted to blog about that earlier but I left it as a draft and forgot all about it.

I don't know about you guys, but quiz shows can be really exciting. You feel really great when you know the answer but the contestants don't and followed by "the answer is xyz, stupid!"

It has been proven that the University of Warwick has the brightest students in the country. A team from the University recently won the TV show University Challenge 2007. This was out of a total of 28 teams from various Universities here in the UK, which entered this year's competition.

The winning team from Warwick was made up of Daisy Christodoulo ( the Captain), Harold Wyber, Rory Gill and Prakesh Patel. To reach the finals they beat Emmanuel College, Cambridge in the first round; University of East Anglia in the second round; Aberystwyth in the quarter finals and University College London in the semis. In the finals, they beat Manchester University, the previous year's champions (170 points to 140). The finals was aired on BBC 2 on 16th of this month.

Related links:
- The University of Warwick Wins University Challenge
- Warwick wins University Challenge

Educational science toys

My daughter is really growing up fast and is really curious about a lot of things. Her favourite word now-a-days seem to be "Why?" An answer to that will most likely result in another "why?". *sigh*

As she grows up, I want to make sure that she doesn't grow up to dislike science. One way to show that science is fun is to buy her fun educational science toys.

Sciencekits.com is an online retailer of educational science kits and toys. I was quite impressed with the wide selection of scientific toys and kits to choose from. In fact I won't mind playing with them myself with my kids.

One product category I was attracted to were the robot kits and one I really liked in particular was the Spider III. Not really suitable for my kids as yet, but it should appeal to a lot of older kids. This weird looking robot avoids obstacles in it's path using an infrared beam. It can even find its way out of a maze.

The Nitty-Gritty Soil Science would be quite useful too. There are a number of cool science experiments for fun activities and games. As I have started gardening, it would be interesting to find out how to perform pH, nitrate, phosphate and potassium soil tests.

Just realised that the toys would be cool for adults too.

Learning PHP from the experts

I once took a short duration certificate course at a local IT college in Malaysia. It was during this course that I was introduced to HTML, CSS and ASP. At that time Open Source and Linux was quite new (at least in Malaysia). During this time, I was working as Communications officer at the Kula Lumpur office of an International NGO. We had an intern from Germany who was developing a website for the organisation. he was showing me the coding and I was lost. This was my first interoduction to Hypertext Preprocessor better known as PHP.

I was really keen to learn this programming language, which was used for designing dynamic web pages. Unfortunately the college didn't include PHP in the course.

I just learnt about OTG's PHP training services. They provide high quality and flexible training at quite affordable prices. The courses were built using a combination of industry recognized materials and their own course guides.

Classes are held at their state-of-the-art facility by Zend Certified PHP MySQL training instructors with over a decade of experience. They are also available for on-site training. Visit the site for more details.