After settling on the seat in an aircraft heading towards Kota Kinabalu (KK), a middle-aged man sitting next to me started talking to me…
“Hi, are you going to have a trip in KK?”, the man asked in a welcoming tone.
“Nop, I’m pursuing my course in University Malaysia Sabah.” I replied.
“?? Was there an university in Sabah??”, the man asked with a pair of dubious eyes looking at me despite being a Sabahan, who stayed in Ranau, Sabah.
“Yes, it had been established ten years and above from today.” I confidently answered.
The following dialog would be the culminating point, namely climax of this post:
“Oh I see. We (our company) never and will not hire any employees graduated from local universities.”, the man said with a hint of sarcasm along with slight chuckling.
Frankly speaking, these unexpected and devastating words really turned me into a disillusioning and upset mode. Soon after it, I was further informed that the man was one of the higher-ups in a well-known listed company engaging in construction sector. The man added he had been pursuing the degree of engineering in England in 1970s.
“Sir, then can you kindly set out the reasons of not employing local graduates???”, I bombarded.
“It’s simply because they lack of wider and broader field of vision.”, he responded patiently. Afterward, he took out a gameboy of latest edition and became steeped in it throughout the flight.
Upon the ‘ball’ was returned to me, my thinking impliedly encircled at a question that are we (local undergraduate) resorting to failure and high possibility of unemployment due to our low competitiveness in the end?
I pressingly craved for an explicit answer ……
2 comments:
其实那位中年人只是想掩饰他过时的常识。
居然以不请本地大学生为理由来推搪自己从没听过的沙巴大学！
机会是留给准备好的人，EQ&IQ俱备的话，还怕有什么做不成的呢？加油！
话说，本地大学排名不停的退步，的确有它问题的存在。。既然不能改变大局，那就使用先进的思考方式，独善其身就好了:)
The man has his point there. Especially if he comes from a distinguished and well-established company. A friend of mine told me before that his wife (Manager of Human Resources Department of Hotel Sutera Harbour) would put UMS graduate's application forms at the very bottom in every of her new-applicant screening.
Well, we should look into and investigate the problems that exist within local university graduates. Identify the problems and find ways to overcome them, and further equip ourselves with deeper knowledge, skills, integrity, experiences and wisdom. We should not ignore all these criticism. Criticism helps us to grow and to see our obstacles and weaknesses. It is our best teacher. Foreign good universities and people accept and open their mind towards all sorts of comments, that's why they are able to advance in tremendous pace and speed. If we look back to our local universities, we are still very sensitive, narrow-minded and conservative. Most of our university managements are heavily influenced by politics and negative mind-sets & cultures. If we look at the qualities of the lecturers and researchers, we are not able to compete at all with the good Universities overseas. If we are to ask professional experts to grade our university teaching staffs in general, we can only get a 0.001 point, comparing to a 200th or higher ranked university in the world.
Of course, our local universities do have their good qualities. But they are not good enough, that's why we never rank high in the world. Therefore, the man did not say empty words. We should take it into deep thoughts, to correct and improve ourselves.
It is better to know the reality earlier than to know it too late. And it is better to know our weaknesses and find resolutions for them, than never able to see where we truly stand.
However, I have to say that some of our local graduates do have very good, deep, caring, disciplined and matured personalities. All human races are same, having both good and bad parts. No human is perfect, if we want to improve, there is only one way - "check our own mistakes and correct for better". Always choose the good, right and meaningful path in our life, not only for ourselves but also for all human kinds!
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