HALF a century ago, I was a tourist guide based in Kuala Lumpur and most of my tour groups were Americans, with many having watched David Niven, a popular British actor, who appeared in a total of 30 movies, including Around the World in 80 Days, in which he won an Oscar.
He starred in the 1975 movie Paper Tiger. The title was taken from a Chinese expression of a person who looks threatening or powerful, but is in fact ineffectual or powerless.
The film was mostly shot in Kuala Lumpur and Cameron Highlands, and my tour company provided chauffeur-driven service for Niven and several others.
Fast forward 50 years to the present, I was dismayed to read that a student who scored a cumulative grade point average (CGPA) of 4.0 and 9.9 out of 10 for co-curricular activities, giving him a merit score of 99.9%, said all six of his applications through the Unit Pusat Universiti (UPU) were rejected without interview.
The 20-year-old from Bukit Mertajam had entered Form Six with one dream: to be accepted at Universiti Malaya (UM) accounting programme. Instead, he was offered a place in a management course at Universiti Sains Malaysia, his fifth choice.
Earlier in July, he was offered UM’s accounting course under the open admission channel known as Saluran Terbuka Awam (SATU) with tuition fees of RM83,000, compared to about RM8,000 under UPU.
By now, talent scouts from foreign universities could join the beeline to interview him with the aim of offering scholarships.
If our best and brightest are not studying in our local universities, many local undergraduates will be competing among the mediocres and emerge as jaguh kampung.
The thousands of PhD holders churned out locally just to meet key performance indicators (KPIs) are nothing more than paper tigers in the field of commerce and industry.
Our government agencies run on easily achievable KPIs and are celebrated as successes in syiok sendiri exercises, instead of delivering real results that uplift communities and the economy.
At one time, we were led to believe that Malaysia will be joining South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore as one of the Asian Tigers.
Yet despite the addition of naturalised players in our national football team known as Harimau Malaya (Malayan Tigers), it is currently ranked 125 globally, compared to 75 in 1993. Such a low raking is better described as tiger cubs instead of full grown tigers.
Likewise, our country and economy will not be fully developed if limited by KPIs set to make the government and its agencies look good on paper, much like a paper tiger.
Will qualifications and their certificates awarded by universities be shredded by the increasing use and dominance of artificial intelligence in the coming years? ‒ Sept 9, 2025
YS Chan is master trainer for Mesra Malaysia and Travel and Tours Enhancement Course and an Asean Tourism Master Trainer. He is also a tourism and transport business consultant.
The views expressed are solely of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Focus Malaysia.
Main image: Shutterstock
