Friday, May 22, 2015

The Ultimate Measurement of Education

From the Malaysian Insider

He told the Dewan Rakyat that the study, which placed Malaysia at 52nd place out of 76 countries, derived its results from the 2012 OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) results, which he said were no longer relevant.
“They are using the facts from the PISA 2012 results. But in 2014, we took a new PISA test. The results will be out soon, maybe next year,” Idris said during question time.
Idris said this in reply to DAP Gelang Patah MP Lim Kit Siang, who had noted in his question that Malaysia was among the bottom third in the OECD study. Lim also said that Malaysian varsities could not rely on the QS Quacquarelli Symonds rankings alone to evaluate their performance, and asked when they planned to take part in the Times Higher Education (THE) rankings.
“We are aware that the QS ranking isn’t the only ranking out there. But we must begin with the QS rankings. For instance, children start out by riding ponies before they ride horses,” said Idris.
He said THE emphasised research and citation in its rankings, and told the Dewan Rakyat that last year’s SCimago Journal and Country Rank revealed Malaysia had published more journals than Singapore in 2013.
 Rankings are funny.  They have methodologies that may or may not work.  While competency in subjects is a quite black and white on what they measure.  What is the end result?

Papers are good, but if the papers are just churned out and not published in scientific journals, is it really relevant?

The ultimate test of an education system is the productivity in the work place and ingenuity on a world class level.  But, by the time productivity can be measured, it will be decades later as the child will need to have grown up to their 20s and 30s and mostly later as their startups will likely mature when they reach 50.

It is important to note although US has education ranked in the mid 20s, it still produces the world's best entrepreneurs and competent individuals.  Education isn't everything.  But it needs to be basic. Malaysia should aim for the mid 20s in the rankings, and criticize the government for not reaching that level every year.  No excuses.

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