How many families were separated?

In response to some of the comments in the previous post, where there were some discussion on why some Malaysians migrate and seek work else, I want to repost an article which I wrote early last year which I think is still very much relevant:

Chinese/Indian Malaysian Parents’ dilemma

Many Malaysian Parents, mainly the non Bumi,have a dilemma regarding their children’s education and future.

I just met a friend who has this to tell me. He is an engineer earning a decent living but not really rich. He has 2 children, and he was grateful that he has only 2. The eldest is a son now just finished his studies in engineering in Australia. The second one is a daughter who has just gone to Australia to study business management.

His dilemma is this. He has no choice but to send his son overseas in order to provide him with a good education, and at the same time to broaden his perspective . He could have asked his son to study locally but the problem was his son might not be given the course of his choice since majority of places for medicine and engineering courses are reserved for Bumi students. He has to work very hard, and has to be very thrifty in order to save to send his children overseas. And he is now near retirement age. He wants his son to come back Malaysia to work but he fears that his son may not get a good job and the prospect of promotion may be limited.

SO he asked me what to do. I told him this is the dilemma faced by many , many Chinese and Indian parents. Who doesn’t want their children to be around them? But at the same time , if the children cannot get good job prospects here , what would the parents do? They would want the children to have the best chance  and do something that they are happy with. And that means letting their children work overseas, where the employment prospect is better, work satisfaction is better and upward mobility is better.

I asked him, why don’t you join your son down under? He answered that he loves Malaysia, he was born and bred here, his friends and relatives are all here, and his business is also here. He would feel out of place and it would not be easy for a middle age man to start his network and friends all over again in a foreign country.

What can we do about this? When a citizen’s child studies overseas, we lose precious foreign exchange and this is no small sum as overseas education runs into hundreds of thousands of ringgits for each student. Over the years, how many Malaysians have gone overseas to study? One hundred thousand? half a million? one million? I don’t have the figure. But Malaysian used to be the biggest group of foreign students in Australia, UK etc. How much money was lost? Astronomical, perhaps.

Harvard University is very expensive

Even Auckland University is not cheap.

How many of these did not come back? I have so many classmates working as consultants in UK, SIngapore and Australia that I have lost count. This is “brain drain” and “brain loss”. Human capital is now recognised as the most important assets in this flattening world. Many of these who stay abroad becomes very famous scientists, doctors, entrepreneurs etc. How much brain was lost? No one can quantify! Who knows, Malaysia would have become a first world country by now if we have all these brains realising their potentials locally. Everyone, including Bumi and non Bumi, would have benefited more than now.

How about the human costs? How many families were seperated? How many parents died a lonely death because their children are overseas?

The lists go on………………………. And the dilemma is getting more acute. 

We should in fact be more farsighted. Tertiary education should be based on merits, with maybe a small proportion reserved for socially handicapped people. For those studying overseas, try to lure them back, place them in GLCs such as petronas, TNB, Telekom,, government departments and let the promotion be based on merits.

That way, the companies can be much more successful, the countiry will be more prosperous, there will be much more job prospects, the economic cake can grow bigger and we then have bigger capacities to offer affirmative action for the less advantaged groups.

 Be farsighted and then be rewarded with every ethnic group getting bigger share of the economy.

P.S. I am personally a victiom of this too. My own son is working in Johns Hopkins Hospital as a  specialist and my own daughter who is in final year medicine in University of AUckland is telling me that she will specialise and probably remain either there or Australia. So this applies to me as well.