Malaysians and UK university - 8th Sept

This news has caused certain sense of discomfort in myself:- Malaysian is Top English student at London varsity. (The Star Newspaper Online) and can be followed here . Its not that I'm not proud of her achievement, but its just that it's particularly minor comparatively and it's not worth an article. I'm sure there are a lot of Malaysian students / ex-students who has achieved similar results in other foreign universities but their names are not mentioned anywhere in the news like the one in this article. This is to me a form of cheap publicity and in the end, the student did not even contribute anything of much value to the country and will be forgotten in the end. Sounds like she got the news due to her influential parents and her parents must have notified the local newspapers to have the story of their daughter's success using money.



And, being mentioned like this in a national newspaper goes to show that they're not particularly fond of local universities. I was wondering, what's wrong with being in a local university? Malaysians, mostly those in the upper-tiers of the society, is fond and reverend foreign universities commonly those in the UK. Why is this? The achievements of our local universities, even when they're worth mentioning, did not even get any form of news, even a single word. It can be assumed that the reporters of newspapers are having a bias here, assuming that the local universities are not up-to par with the foreign universities which is a shame and disgrace on the reporters side. Reading through the news, I wonder:- What good is it to have a bachelor in arts (english) in terms of the progress of the country? It's not like she can contribute by improving the standard of English on the whole? Heck, I wonder if she could get a lot of Malaysians to read her book that she plans to write considering that Malaysians generally do not have a often reading habit. So, my main point is that: What's with publishing a seemingly common news of a Malaysian student abroad with no particular useful information or contribution to the benefit of the society? Not only is it a waste effort, but also an atriocity!

I'm sure there are parties who say that I'm jealous of her success and such stories, well, say whatever you want, the truth remains that I'm proud of her achievement, but the sense of pride diminished when it was published in a newspaper. It was a minor story not worthy of a headline and it did not make any difference in our lives today.