Penny wise pound foolish - this best describes Malaysia's goal towards attaining the status of becoming the regional hub for education excellence.

A look at just how messed up the country's education system is one example. The government's abysmal efforts in improving the education scenario back home is certainly not going to impress foreigners to pick Malaysia as a study destination.

With its priorities blurred, the government is viewing education merely as a means to an end. Education is no longer taking place for the purpose of producing informed and knowledgeable individuals. Instead education has today become a commodity and the government is preoccupied only in producing workers for the labour market - never mind whether they are knowledgeable or not. The focus is to meet the number of workers the job market of today desperately wants.

The lack of focus and a shift of priority in the education system has seen a backlash, one which is now causing the government a 'headache'.

Human Resource Minister Dr Fong Chan Onn recently announced that the ministry had spent a staggering RM82 million under a six-month graduate retraining programme to sharpen the skills of unemployed graduates. Fong said a total of RM100 million had been allocated for the programme with 14,000 such graduates currently being retrained.

The literally expensive programme was to help unemployed graduates upgrade their language competency, interpersonal and computer skills so that they stood a chance in securing a job.

This money-wasting project of the government's does not make sense because those three aspects targetted could certainly be carried out at the schools and universities. There is no need nor excuse for the goverment to justify implementing a programme that comes at a whopping price of RM82 million.

Instead the money could have been put to better use in supporting bright students who for unexplained reasons fail to obtain a scholarship or most sadly lose out in securing a place at the local universities. The most recent case was that of a 22-year-old blind girl S Gomathi who in spite of having achieved a cumulative grade point average (CGPA) of 2.75 failed to achieve a place in any of Malaysia's local university.

Does the failure of the local public universities to rush to Gomathi's side with an offer not attest to the fact that our education system instead of honouring deserving high achievers like her only goes to dishearten them? Gomathi, whose father died when she was 10 and who was raised by her tailor mother has shown that physically handicap is no barrier towards doing one's best. Yet, this spunky girl whose dream is to become a teacher for special children, has now learnt that doing one's best does not necessarily guarantee one the necessary support to make it in life.

The 'malpractice' of offering students a place to public universities has caused many of Malaysia's intelligent studens to emigrate with the hope of securing better and brighter chances at education and work outside Malaysia. Are youngsters like Gomathi to be blamed should she contemplate leaving the country to settle down in other part of the world when her very own motherland has failed to honour her efforts and dreams? Are students like Gomathi to be blamed for feeling discriminated, knowing fully well that public universities have no qualms taking in students who least deserve to be there?

Stop rhetorics

Fong's argument that there was no reason for graduates to be unemployed when there were "lots more" jobs available in the country and the rationale that the problem of unemployed graduates arose due to a mismatch between the qualifications and expectations of the employees is nothing more than mere rhetorics.

If Fong thinks he has found the answer to why the country's graduates are failing to get jobs and have instead gone on to become a liability to the country, would it not be right for him to discuss this finding with the Education and Higher Education ministries respectively so that this problem could be addressed at the grassroots level?

Tackling the problem of language competency, interpersonal and computer skills should be the concern of schools and not the Human Resource Ministry.

Otherwise, what purpose do the expensive computer laboratories serve? Is it embarrassing to note that schools have failed to produce students who have it in them to impress prospective employers when they attend job interviews.

What have the schools' and universities' in the country been doing when the end result has been graduates who cannot string a sentence in English without fumbling over the grammar? How have the almost 16 to 17 years of education pusuit benefitted the students if they at the end of the day have no idea of what the notions of self-esteem and self-confidence are all about?

Money not the answer

Spending massive amounts in retraining unemployed graduates is no answer to this problem. It is akin to treating a disease without understanding what has caused it. The government must stop giving its tax payers the impression that it has money to throw and that too for lame reasons. The government must get serious in tackling the problem of unemployed graduates if it is to achieve the status of a regional hub of educational excellence.

The solution to get the public sector to asborb unemployed graduates as announced by Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi recently is definitely not dealing with the core problem, regardless of how many of such jobs are available in this sector. What happens then to the concern of these graduates not being able to display language competency, interpersonal and computer skills? Has some sort of 'compromise' been made on these?

Indeed, if a compriomise has taken place and with Fong's statement that there are plenty such vacancies availabe, then why the need to spend RM82 million or allocate RM100 million for a programme which serves no purpose really and ends up being redundant?

If the aim of the education system of today is to produce workers or labourers for the job market, then perhaps it might be better if efforts were made to create robots instead. There would be no need to fork out loads of money to retrain them and work could get done effectively without the worry of these machines having interpersonal skills.

However, should the problem of unemployed graduates prick the government like a thorn in the flesh, then it should waste no time in finding a 'cure' to this problem. And mind you, a 'cure' is very much possible.