Malaysia: Risk of trading away the future with quota based College admission.

May 11, 2001

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INTRODUCTION: This map shows what would happen to Malaysia if they continue their existing social contract between the Malays (bumiputras) and non-Malays. Like demographics, the long term consequences of educational and language policy cannot be quickly reversed. But the Malays are not stupid. Their system, and in particular the NEP or New Economic Policy is the result of race riots in the seventies. In its present form it has diminished their confidence and limits their potential to achieve. The baggage of history, if it is even possible at all, takes a long time to cast off. And since the Asian financial crisis and the Anwar saga, their society seems to have begun to shift away towards some unknown destination. Taboo subjects like the quota based system for university admissions is now discussed publicly. This is evidence that forces beyond the control of any group of the government have been unleashed. I am afraid the genie has escaped the lamp. Would this be a benign genie? We will have to build more maps to study this.	How to Read Maps Maps Investment Maps Business Maps Experts Maps Other Maps Local Interest
(Fig 1) Straightforward logic, 55% of university places are reserved for bumiputras and 45% for the rest (box 2). The number of places in universities is within the government control as you can always expand the universities. The bottleneck is the number of bumis that are good enough for a university education without turning such institutions of higher learning into a joke (box 1). Are you are a non-Malay and you want to get into university? Help more Malays make the grade, and you can then join them. You will find that this is far easier than competing against the top 45% of qualifying candidates whose numbers are limited by so few qualified Malays (box 3). But by current norms, I am spewing nonsense here. It is an outrageous idea, helping Malays that basically just does not have what it takes to get into university. So for a long time to come, the Chinese who are more family directed than race directed would rather accumulate and aggregate family resources and send their children to foreign universities. But as you can read from the newspapers, the criminal story of those who are talented but denied places in the universities.
(Fig 2) The result is a massive loss of talent (box 4), of Chinese leaving the country, and the cleverer Malays not working at their books, and under performing their potential. This leads to an inevitable decline in scholarship (box 5), whilst the current policy burdened the Malays with a psychological handicap causing them to under perform. Over time, Malaysia’s economy will under perform its peers (box 6). If the Chinese is successfully learning not to spit in public, the Malays can learn to be more hard working. If a Chinese with abilities equal to a Malay works harder, how can he or she not out perform the Malay. The current NEP is a self-defeating system because it takes away the Malays’ confidence. If a metaphor can be admitted here, the NEP gives the Malays bicycles, and the non-Malays have only their running shoes. But in this race, the Malays would loose unless they are prepared to work the pedals. Discussions on unequal endowment of intelligence among races are irrelevant. What is meaningful is making the Malays confident and therefore with hope, the willingness to work hard and achieve.
The Bumis must be given medals for reproducing themselves (box 1), a task so difficult that its neighbor to the south with its super effective and holder of many international firsts government is not confident of achieving. But such a trend in population change only serves to aggravate Box 1 and Box 2. To the narrow minded and insecure, Box 2 may be cause for rejoicing. For simplicity, we do not want to reflect it on this map, but it would only aggravate Box 6.
(Fig 4) Over time, the non-Malay threat disappears as their numbers dwindle (box 1). The educational quota system also become irrelevant as few non-Malays compete for places in local universities. But you have also nurtured a less achieving society (box 2). At the inception of the NEP, natural resource was the key to wealth. Almost thirty years later, it has shifted to knowledge resources. As a result, except for the booms in times of temporary shortages, the Malaysian economy will suffer a natural resource discount (box 3).
(Fig 5) Note that Box 3 and Box 4, which are red boxes, have appeared after the magenta colored ones. Why is the flow of events reversed? This goes back to my starting point that the Malays have smart people who can see down the road the consequences of their exhausted NEP. These boxes are not in blue or black color because it has not happen yet. Red comes after blue. The Chinese are now capitalizing on UMNO’s moment of weakness to further their interest because the Malays have become divided lot. This form part of any possible scenarios under “prevailing conditions” (box 4), which the Malaysian government would have to fashion policies (box 3). The process by which this would come about will be confusing and uncertain.