Back door to LQB?
written by Richard Wee Thiam Seng, Thursday, September 11 2008 12:50 pm
I find it odd that these Universities went on to offer a Law Degree not recognised by LQB, and then now are asking it to be recognised. Isn't this a back door way to get recognition? It forces the high powered delegate from Bar Council to take into account humanitarian reasons like the welfare of the students, when by right one should look at the quality of the education before approving it's degree. Only in Malaysia we get this lah.
Richard Wee Thiam Seng
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written by Fatima Bt Tahir Ali, Thursday, September 11 2008 01:16 pm
Dear Richard How does one assess the quality of education without actually running the course programme?? Chicken and egg situation , me thinks. Dear all What I am interested in knowing is whether the degree offered by these universities is in itself recognised by the CLP Board. Do their law graduates qualify to sit for the CLP? Should not that be the first step before they seek exemption from sitting the CLP exam? Just my 2 sens.
Fatima Bt Tahir Ali
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written by Stephen Tan Ban Cheng, Thursday, September 11 2008 03:12 pm
Firstly, let me congratulate the Bar Council for sending such a high-powered team for the evaluation exercise, an effort mounted probably at short notice. Secondly, I would have thought that before offering the law course, both Universiti Utara Malaysia (UUM) and the Multi-media University (MMU) would have gone through the preliminary paces of obtaining prior approval from the Legal Profession Qualifying Board (LPQB). In the result, those who have been conferred the degrees end up being placed in the twilight zone, surely a psychologically agonizing experience at best.
Facing the CLP examination is not a joke, neither is it a walk in the park. I am sure that the Vice Chancellors and those Education Department officers responsible owe all Malaysians an explanation for this monumental oversight which, for all we know, could have been born out of arrogance and even contempt for the very system of which they are a part. Given that these degrees are only conferred after three or four years of study, this may well show just how much the authorities in these two universities think of our legal system! Even had the approval been sought while the degree was being read by the students, it would still be wrong. Did the university authorities do even that? If the reply is in the negative, it compounds this monumental oversight into a calculated one. It means that they are confident that in the end, the interest of the students would be held paramount and LPQB approval would have been a fiat accompli (an accomplished fact).
To be fair to both UUM and the MMU, law degrees from the University of Malaya, the International Islamic University University Technology Mara and University Kebangsaan Malaysia law degrees must be subjected to a LPQB evaluation since the last four universities never went through such a stringent exercise.
By the way, who were our learned presidents at that time? Did they not speak out about such a basic thing? I hope that whoever they are, they do not belong to that category of ex-presidents who walked out of our AGM some years ago! In my days at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand, the law course was a limited one. We had an annual intake of 680 students culled from thousands of applicants. Into the second year, only 180 students were left, leaving a casualty rate of more than 70 per cent. Into the final year, only 120 students graduated.
As an advancing student, I was on record as having lambasted this “killing field” that the law course represented. That I never faced any punitive action showed New Zealand’s democratic spirit to allow the alternative view. Now I know why numbers must be kept down. I guess to be pragmatic, a similar rationale exists for us to keep the numbers down in Malaysia.
Stephen Tan Ban Cheng
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