A losing battle in Science vs Arts?

KUALA LUMPUR: Students continue to stream to the Arts rather than Science field and this imbalance has raised concern among academics, who say many students wrongly believe that science is not lucrative, difficult to learn and boring.

The latest ratio of science to arts students at the upper secondary and university levels in 2013 was 43.3:56.7 — a long way from the 60:40 target set by the Planning Committee of Higher Education in 1967.

The National Council of Professors’ Science and Mathematics Cluster secretary Professor Datuk Dr Abdul Razak Salleh said the declining interest in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) subjects in recent years was worrying, especially if the nation desired to be developed by 2020.

“The vision is now a stone’s throw away, and, in no time, we will see our nation facing a shortage of science professionals.”

He believed that the lack of interest in science could be traced back to the early days, when its subjects were seen as “too difficult” and “exclusively for the exceptionally brilliant”.

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