Malaysia Able To Achieve First Class Innovation Society Status, Says Harvard Don

KUALA LUMPUR, Jan 18 (Bernama) -- Malaysia is able to achieve a first class innovative society status if there are reforms in the education system and immigration laws, suggests an American economic scholar. Emeritus Professor in the Faculty of Arts and Science at the Harvard University, Prof Dwight H. Perkins, said the reformed immigration laws would helped to woo back Malaysians working abroad to serve the country. "Make sure you have a law that will make them come back and serve the home country. If they are not coming back, it wouldn't be a loss to the world but a loss to you," he said in a 'Special Lecture: Understanding Malaysia's Growth Rate in Comparison with the Rest of East Asia' here Tuesday. Also present was University of Malaya Chancellor, Sultan Nazrin Muizzudin Shah. Perkins said Malaysia needed a society that was able to create new businesses to ensure the country pass through middle income trap. "Relying on foreign direct investments in creating innovative society is a bad gamble. With the current policy, you wont't be able to achieve the three to four per cent growth (moving forward)," said Perkins, who is also the Harold Hitchings Burbank Professor of Political Economy. Perkins said the education system must prepared the students at all levels, making education gearing towards producing first class students. "This will ensure people coming out from the secondary schools are well prepared to enter colleges especially those in engineering, sciences and so on," he said. He said generally, steady and determined efforts to improve the quality of the universities and secondary schools were a big part of it. --BERNAMA