AS a student in one of Malaysia’s public universities, the submission period is the most important time of the semester. Deadlines for most assignments are often a few days apart from each other.
Therefore, with mounting last-minute rechecks, consultations and group discussions, students start to lose focus and feel hopeless. They feel like they are either being graded too much, too little or unfairly.
The other day, my friend told me over dinner that he was demotivated as there were assignments and group tasks to complete, and the semester was coming to an end. He wished he was among the anak orang senang clique, those upper middle-class kids, who drive Ford Fiestas and dine at expensive eateries more than once a week.
He was worried about his finances and the future in general, unlike those he assumed need not worry about money. He could not afford to fail.
Comparing himself with them, he complained and claimed they were lackadaisical students, unethical and impetuous. They appeared not to care about assignments and other class-based tasks.
He then consoled himself by saying: “It’s okay, they’re rich. They can fail. Unlike me, I need to do better than my parents.”
I believe this is the voice of many low- or middle-income Bumiputera students in Malaysia. They must work harder and better, but that may not necessarily pay off post-graduation.
Economist Guy Standing, a British professor of Development Studies at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, and co-founder of the Basic Income Earth Network, said the precariat (the new dangerous class) is a class-in-the-making of people who suffer from unpredictability in terms of labour, job identity and wages.
With mounting student debt to pay after graduation and limited and competitive entry into the labour market, youths are forced to take second jobs — often outside of their expertise and are poorly paid — just to make ends meet.
Maybe this is the basis of my friend’s uneasiness. That life after graduation for a middle-class Malay man living in the Klang Valley is precarious, unlike the anak orang senang.
There is this deep sense of angst among students like him. Since jobs are limited, upward mobility seems almost impossible; the rich get richer and the poor will try their best to have a piece of the pie, working twice as much, but still failing.
In the end, this will lead to a lack of confidence in the authorities, democracy and the system.
As we walked out of the cafe, he told me: “I wish I were rich; things would be easier for me.”
I understood him because both of us were born into middle-income Malay families, and despite incentives for Bumiputeras, we still think that the future is uncertain, that the future belongs to the privileged few, and despite trying our best, we are just not born into the “right family”.
A. Afiq
International Islamic University Malaysia