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My latest column in The Vibes

VERY often, children with dyslexia are just considered ‘stupid kids’ or diagnosed as slightly autistic.

Both ‘diagnoses’ are incorrect, leaving the problem basically unaddressed in Malaysian schools.

As a result, many people go through life completely undiagnosed with the condition, which often leading to deep depression. This is confirmed with statistics.

According to the Ministry of Education’s Special Education database, 314,000, or 17 per cent of the students enrolled in primary schools, have some form of dyslexia.

Studies in the United Kingdom indicate that at least 80 per cent of students with dyslexia in the UK are never diagnosed.

Dyslexia is a general learning disorder that involves difficulty in reading and writing, due to not being able to listen and identify speech sounds and relate them to the written word, and make the necessary sounds to communicate back.

Dyslexia is neurological, and as such, can’t be cured. However, the condition can be adjusted.

The general signs of dyslexia are difficult to recognise before a child attends school.

The only tell-tale sign is that the child may be very slow to pick up speech as an infant.

At pre-school and early primary school, the child will be observed as a slow learner.

The varying severity of dyslexia often makes it very difficult to spot and diagnose, especially by untrained teachers.

The first obvious signs may only appear in the early primary grades, where a child has difficulty in learning new words, reading and repeating nursery rhymes.

As the child’s education continues, he or she will have trouble understanding and grasping new concepts presented in class.

Thus, in the class situation, a child will start falling behind the rest of the students, where social problems will begin to manifest.

This will lead to loss of self-esteem, lack of confidence, and possible depression at an early age, particularly if the child is not diagnosed. Often, they are targeted by other students for bullying, just because they are different.

During these years, the child will struggle with English comprehension, doing mathematics, solving mathematical problems, and learning a foreign language.

Dyslexia does not correlate with intelligence. This is a mistake many make in assessing these children.

Dyslexia is sometimes associated with other learning disorders, such as dyspraxia, the difficulty of performing coordinated movements, dyscalculia, the difficulty in dealing with numbers, dysgraphia, the difficulty of turning thoughts into the written word, and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), a hyperactive behavioural disorder.

In addition, dyslexia may be associated with prosopagnosia, a condition where a person has difficulties recognising people’s faces.

This will often be accompanied by a form of anomic aphasia, where a person has difficulty remembering names.

Like dyslexia, all the above are neurological disorders. There is a probability that these conditions may accompany dyslexia.

Due to the complexity of these disorders, differing extremities along a spectrum, and differing sets of symptoms, they are extremely difficult to diagnose, outside a clinical situation, where cognitive tests are done.

When dyslexia is associated with other disorders, the child may find great difficulty in learning.

This can lead to social integration problems, where on occasion they withdraw from parents, teachers and friends.

With the addition of ADHD, students may be seen as class disrupters, being anxious and/or aggressive in the classroom.

Without any assistance, these students are likely to eventually just drop out of the education system, with low self-confidence and self-esteem.

This often leads to delinquency.

If students can be diagnosed early, they can be assisted in the early years.

This may require one-to-one speech therapy, and specialists assisting the child in finding the best ways to learn.

The key with dyslexic students is teaching them how to learn alongside others.

This is most desirable as it assists these students in socially integrating with people around them. Being segregated into any “special needs” classes may lead to social isolation in future years.

If dyslexia is not discovered and diagnosed, the child will go through school life continually struggling to understand new work.

Children not knowing and understanding their disability may just go on living with low self-esteem, because they will continue to compare themselves with others through life.

In most cases, this leads to stress, anxiety and depression in life, where they will be incorrectly treated with drugs.

For example, they may be medically treated for depression when the real problem is learning to live with their cognitive disadvantages due to dyslexia. In addition, they may continue through life having trouble with relationships.

Dyslexia is of concern to about one in ten people. Undiagnosed, they may have trouble progressing in any career within regimented organisations, most of which are.

However, if they know how to compensate for their cognitive weakness, chances are they can go on and have a fulfilling career.

There is a strong positive correlation between ADHD and successful entrepreneurs.

Several studies have shown that people with ADHD can become high achievers with the energy, motivation, and give them a propensity towards action.

However, ADHD may also bring impulsiveness, which could lead to recklessness.

Once again, diagnosis is the key, so those who have ADHD know how to cope with the behavioural traits it brings.

One can build new strengths by understanding one’s weaknesses.

Dyslexia is a massive challenge for an already overloaded and under-resourced education system.

Putting the responsibility of finding and diagnosing dyslexic people on the teacher is grossly insufficient. Special and compulsory training needs to be incorporated within the teacher training curriculum as a minimum.

To support teachers, there must be a sufficient special education infrastructure behind them. This is made even more difficult, as the types and degrees of the dyslexic grouping require more art than science to assist students in learning how to learn and overcome their weaknesses.

There are no textbook remedies, where solutions are found through deductive problem solving.

This is especially the case when these conditions are mixed at different intensities require creative solutions.

Such an approach will assist many people to live fulfilling lives. This can turn many people who might be dismissed as losers into high achievers.

Now it’s time for you to re-examine yourself if you can relate to any of what is said above.

You may have some form of dyslexia, where you can learn how to cope and manage this condition. – May 25, 2026

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Many British legacy universities are now in a rapid decline due to misreading structural developments in the higher education environment, changes in management conceptions of their institutional role in education and repeated poor decision-making at the most senior levels. One such example is Nottingham University.

The University of Nottingham traces its origins to an adult education school founded in 1798 and Cambridge University Extension Lectures that began in Nottingham in 1873. The institution’s formal foundation is dated to 1881 with the establishment of University College Nottingham, which prepared students for University of London examinations.

An anonymous £10,000 donation in 1875 enabled permanent operations, leading to the laying of the foundation stone in 1877 by Prime Minister William Gladstone, whose father was a wealthy slave owner. The official opening of its neo-Gothic building on Shakespeare Street was inaugurated by Prince Leopold in 1881. Early departments in literature, physics, chemistry and natural sciences expanded rapidly to include engineering, classics, French, education and others. The college remained tied to the city until gaining greater independence through a royal charter in 1903.

Significant growth followed, including a move in the 1920s to the new University Park campus on land donated by local businessman Sir Jesse Boot (Lord Trent), and the Trent Building opened by King George V in 1928. High-profile visitors such as Einstein, H.G. Wells and Gandhi spoke there during this era. After rejecting a federal East Midlands university proposal, University College Nottingham received its own royal charter in 1948, becoming the University of Nottingham with degree-awarding powers.

Subsequent developments included the merger with the School of Agriculture, the UK’s first new 20th-century medical school in 1970, the opening of Jubilee Campus, purchase of the King’s Meadow campus and major expansion into international campuses in Malaysia and China. In recent years the university has faced controversies including the 2008 “Nottingham Two” Islamic terrorism case and a 2021 chaplain appointment which raised concerns about views on abortion and assisted suicide. The University’s achievements include an Athena SWAN Gold Award in 2023 for gender equality.

However, by 2025–2026 Nottingham University announced major financial pressures, leading to the planned suspension of 16 courses, which included all modern languages and music, where over 600 job cuts through redundancies.

Over the last 45 years, the British government have cut around 25 percent funding to public universities. These cuts had to be covered through increasing education fees where rises were restricted for British citizens. Hence, many British universities like Nottingham faced with low domestic birth rates in the UK source international students to increase revenue.

While this move raised university revenues it also meant that teaching standards had to be reduced to cater for students whose English was a second language. Over the last 3 decades, Nottingham University was forced to go through a metamorphous, where education in most faculties was turned into ‘factory’ like teaching, with pastoral care and responsibility on the part of educators reduced. Many tenured people were replaced with contract staff when they retired.

Over the past two decades the University made substantial capital investments to develop and expand its multi-campus model. This includes acquiring and refurbishing the King’s Meadow Campus in 2005 on a former television studio site and more recently purchasing the 3.75-hectare Castle Meadow Campus below Nottingham Castle in 2021 for £37.5 million, followed by over £40 million in refurbishment costs to prepare it for opening from 2023.

The university also invested heavily in its international campuses, relocating the Malaysia campus to a purpose-built 101-acre (41 ha) site in Semenyih in 2005 and establishing a full campus in Ningbo, China in 2004–2006, complete with a replica of the iconic Trent Building. These developments, alongside ongoing maintenance of the large Sutton Bonington agricultural and veterinary campus (over 221 hectares plus additional farm sites), the Jubilee Campus opened in 1999 and major facilities such as the David Ross Sports Village, significantly increased the university’s fixed assets and operational footprint.

However, many of these investments have since contributed to financial strain, with the 2024/25 accounts recording a £74.8 million impairment on the Castle Meadow and King’s Meadow campuses amid plans to sell both sites.

Consequently, the University of Nottingham reported a significantly weakened financial position in 2024/25. The Group recorded a deficit of £76.8 million, compared to a £220.7 million surplus the previous year, while the University alone posted a deficit of £71.5 million (vs a £220.1 million surplus in 2023/24). Total Group income rose modestly to £863.1 million, but expenditure surged to £947.4 million, largely due to a £74.8 million impairment on the revaluation of the Castle Meadow and King’s Meadow campuses and £11.3 million in restructuring costs.

On an adjusted basis excluding pension changes and one-off gains/losses, the Group recorded an underlying deficit of £85.3 million. However, Vice-Chancellor Jane Norman stated that the university moved from an underlying deficit of £3.2 million in 2024 to a small underlying surplus of £0.8 million in 2025.

Tuition fees remain the largest income source at £453.1 million, followed by research grants (£140.4 million), funding body grants (£118.1 million), and other operating income (£145 million). Endowments stand at £82.5 million, while total net assets declined to £761 million (Group) and £713.9 million (University alone).

Overall, the university is under considerable financial pressure, reflected in planned campus sales, course closures and significant staff redundancies, despite claims of a marginally improved underlying operating performance.

Nottingham Malaysia

The Nottingham Malaysia campus was the first British university franchise campus in Malaysia established through an invitation from the then minister of education and Nottingham graduate, Najib Razak, to establish an overseas campus in partnership between arms manufacturer Boustead Holdings Berhad and YTL Corporation Berhad. Najib was later convicted of unrelated corruption charges and sentenced to 12 years imprisonment.

A major driver of the decision was the impact of the Asian Financial Crisis and a misplaced prediction that the decline in overseas students could be mitigated by building bricks-and-mortar operations in one of the major markets. However, the Malaysian market situation was misread, as the federal government had opened at least 8 new universities in the early 2000s which soaked up much local demand.

After three years of planning the Nottingham franchise began with only 89 students in September 2000 in Kuala Lumpur and in 2005, relocated to a virtually unpopulated campus in Semenyih 40 miles away in a plantation owned by Boustead. This was a very unattractive site for studying, particularly from the Chinese market, where students expected to be domiciled in urban areas.

Under its previous CEO, Graham Kendall, Boustead had attempted to sell the Nottingham franchise in 2021 for a reported sum of RM137 million, less than it had invested over more than two decades of ownership. The sale was withdrawn in 2022.

Professor Graham Kendall denied Nottingham’s problems

Since then, the stability of the Nottingham franchise in Malaysia has been repeatedly called into question. Earlier this year it was revealed that the Malaysia operations is deeply in debt. The UK university accounts stated that the amount owed to them by the Malaysian campus stood at £7.6 million (about RM40.1 million) as of July 2025, up from £5.6 million (about RM29.3 million) the year before.

In an astonishing attempt to defend itself the university issued a statement denying that it was about to close down.

The financial difficulties of the Malaysian campus arise in part from a 22% decline in students from 2021, when they reported around 5,200 students to only 4,064 students in 2024. Income to the UK campus decreased sharply to £1.8 million (RM9.5 million) recorded in 2024 from just over £2.8 million (about RM14.8 million) in 2022. Nottingham fell victim to the rapid rise in the number of new higher education institutions being set up in China to absorb local student demand.

With the Nottingham UK campus itself struggling with survival following the announcement that the university will run out of money by 2031 putting 2,700 jobs at risk and more than 600 employees are already expected to be terminated in the next three years unions have started strike action and a marking boycott which could stop students from graduating. This will also impact students in Malaysia if dual marking schemes hit a choke-point in the UK.

In addition, the shockwave from recent announcement that the British government has blocked ‘UK degrees’ from the Newcastle medical campus in Malaysia has rippled through the other UK franchise campuses. In a recent email to students, David FitzPatrick, CEO of the Nottingham Malaysia franchise said, “We continue to operate with stability, invest in your education and campus experience, and deliver the high-quality Nottingham degree you enrolled to receive.”

When asked whether this was convincing a recent graduate replied, “Nope but as long as my Malaysian employers are convinced … it’s a different story overseas.”

A major factor in the decline of Nottingham University has been the decay of the ‘deep learning and education culture’ with a business culture where students have become a commodity rather than a learning cohort. Not just students have fallen victims to this culture. Nottingham has failed to protect its staff’s financial security, through not honouring work contracts to geographical escape clauses. Nottingham staff relocated from the UK to Malaysia found themselves destitute from the management’s reckless employment contract approach. Several ongoing labour disputes with local and overseas staff are still ongoing.

Like many UK institutions, Nottingham faces pressure from rising Asian universities and challenges in funding and competition. Nottingham currently remains a respected research-intensive university with strong real-world outcomes. However, its current financial situation may weaken future outreach in Asia, leading to potential closure in Malaysia.

The Nottingham case provides an object lesson for other universities from the UK and elsewhere who may be considering or even undergoing international expansion. Overseas markets may not yield the fruits expected at their inception and troubles in the home campuses as well as policy changes can damage perceptions and stakeholder approvals. This impacts financial stability which ultimately places franchise campus at risk, without any guarantee of support from any source.

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A portion of the letter (see in attached article) and Ann Franke

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Evidence is mounting that in a desperate attempt to defend their discredited reputation the Chartered Management Institute (CMI) has stooped so low as to use a fake UK government letter to deceive stakeholders in Malaysia, including the Malaysian government into the false belief that they have support from the UK government.

Our investigations have shown that a purported letter of support for the CMI written by a British Department of Business and Trade (UKDBT) education leader Sarah Chidgey is not genuine.

A copy of this letter was forwarded to one of the writers, indicating the letter dated April 9^th 2026 has been circulated very widely among CMI stakeholders in Malaysia, including potential 6,000 CMI members and 21 universities.

The letter was even forwarded to the higher echelons of the Malaysian higher education leadership including YBhg. Datuk Dr. Anesee bin Ibrahim the Secretary General at the Ministry of Higher Education (MOHE) and Prof. Dato’ Dr. Mohammad Shatar Sabran, the Chief Executive Officer of the Malaysian Qualifications Agency (MQA).

Through examination of the layout of the letter alone, there are several details that indicate this was not an official letter from the DBT. These include:

· The logo and address are not aligned at the top;

· The telephone number at the bottom is a personal mobile number not an official UKDBT contact;

· The telephone format is incorrect for UK mobile numbers and the signature format is also incorrect;

· The signature is electronic or even written with a standard MS Word font which can be easily fabricated;

· The letter itself does not have the recipients’ addresses, positions or proper salutations on it;

· It is not a proper protocol for a letter to be addressed to two very senior people in this way, especially when they hold different roles in different organisations;

· It appears that this is a stock letter with recipients’ names inserted at the top which has been provided to allow CMI to change the recipients and send to a mass audience without further reference to the UKDBT for approval of the mass emails, and

· The letter is already being shared from the CMI in the UK with members of the general public with the recipients Datuk Dr. Anesee and Prof. Dato’ Dr Mohd Shatar identified.

The strangest issue was the name of the file that contained the letter which is labelled “DBT-SUPPORT-LETTER-ANN-FRANKE.” The letter was prepared for the use of Ann Franke, the CEO of the CMI, who faces allegations of perjury and witness tampering in the Malaysian courts.

In addition, the alleged author, Sarah Chidgey, is a member of the CMI International Advisory Committee and appears to have family connections with the CMI senior leadership. As such there is a conflict of interest in her writing this letter on behalf of the UK government.

Third, the remarks made in the letter which claim that the CMI is fully compliant with UK regulatory bodies including Ofqual and that there are no investigations taking place are totally incorrect. Our communications with the UK accreditation agencies found that both Wales and Northern Irelead had requested that CMI stop using their logos on certificates issued overseas. Further, Ofqual is still in the process of carrying out an investigation.

In regard to the Malaysian Qualifications Agency (MQA), Sarah Chidgey stated that CMI’s certificates are fully acceptable within the MQA framework. This is incorrect and the CMI have been selling unregulated certificates in Malaysia since 2017. Although Sarah mentioned that the CMI Level 7 qualification has an ‘equivalency assessment’, the Level 4 and Level 5 certificates have not received any regulatory endorsement from MQA.

Can the DBT be trusted?

Finally, the letter is defamatory against two unmanned individuals who are claimed to be making false accusations is conduct unbecoming for correspondence coming from a British government department.

The writers have contacted Sarah Chidgey and the media section of DBT twice. One of the writers was given a promise that a formal reply would be provided by May 18 2026 which has passed without any explanation or verification of the letter by DBT.

Consequently, the DBT has given no denial or confirmation as to whether the letter is legitimate.

We also note that all of Sarah Chidgey’s social media has completely disappeared around three days after DBT was contacted by the writers. This is standard procedure in cases where civil servants have been suspended or sacked. No confirmation has been received from DBT.

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I developed this hypothesis just after I wrote my books on entrepreneurship. The theory of 8 types of imagination is now used in education and writing. It has also been claimed as an introspection on cosplay.

Here is an application developed for writers by the Argumentative Penguin published in The Writing Cooperative.

Understanding your Creative Engine — the 8 types of Imagination

The real engine of creative writing is the imagination. The ability to create new people from scratch, to put them into scenarios and to tell stories. If you cannot imagine, you cannot write. It is the single most important thing for you to understand about your process.

There are 8 types of imagination. I’ll broadly explain them according to the psychological model. For those of you who enjoy additional research you can have a look for Hunter (2012). Then I’ll highlight how they might specifically apply to writing and your work as a writer.

The more you understand your thought processes, the more efficiently you can work.

According to Murray. The Eight subsections of imagination are:

1. Effectuative imagination

2. Intellectual or constructive imagination

3. Imaginative fantasy

4. Empathy

5. Strategic imagination

6. Emotional imagination

7. Dreams

8. Memory Reconstruction.

It’s important to note that there is some overlap between each of these types of imagination. They don’t function entirely independently from each other and many of them combine during the course of every day.

Effectuative imagination

This is what allows us to synthesise existing ideas together from existing information. If I were to offer you a penguin and dog-poop sandwich, you probably don’t have to try it to know that you won’t like it. You simply took the existing information (the ingredients) and made a brand new construct (the sandwich).

As a writer you can think of yourself as a conduit for creating new ideas from existing information already in the creative sphere. You’re creating something new from something that already exists across all of human history. You’re joining a canon of writers who already exist and who have set templates and genres.

It’s important that you read, the more you read, the more information you have to draw on for your imagination. When you’re an avid reader, you’re an avid imaginer, when you’re an avid imaginer then you’re much better prepared to be a true story wrangler. You can take existing things and you can make them into something new. This is the heart of good scriptwriting.

Intellectual Imagination

is when you’re able to work from an existing plan or a definite idea and is guided towards a distinct purpose. Intellectual imagination is a very conscious and deliberate process.

For those of us that have a dream about a great piece of work, the one thing that we’re determined to write over the course of our lives. We want it to be absolutely right. In order to do this, we have to imagine — we have to research and we have to create something spectacular consciously and with a lot of effort and care. We may spend more than a decade or two researching it and creating something that transcends the financial reward we may get for it. The book Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett is a great example of this.

Imaginative Fantasy

This is when you’re able to generate new ideas from scratch and can be guided or unguided. This is what most writers and artists are good at. We usually have a moment of inspiration and go off to explore wherever the fantasy may take us. Lots of my time spent as a writer is done walking. Walking and thinking and daydreaming. Letting my brain go off in it’s own direction and return with things that haven’t been thought of yet.

Any time you walk into a library, just take a moment to stand and bathe in the collected imagination of humanity. Stories have been created in thousands of genres, millions of characters (some of whom are more famous than any living person) and billions and billions of words. All simply to take the story from one person’s head and implant it into someone else’s. Imaginative fantasy is the soul of creativity.

Empathy

This is a capacity that human beings have to mentally detach from ourselves and experience what another person is experiencing from their point of view. It allows us to take an imaginative stroll in someone else’s shoes.

To be a good writer I think you must have a great deal of empathy. I think it’s important for all the characters you write that you’re able to see the world as they see it. How else would you be able to create rounded characters otherwise? There is nothing worse than characters that feel false, particularly characters who are written as two-dimensionally evil. Even the most evil person thinks they’re the good guy. To understand that, you’ve got to have empathy.

Without empathetic imagination working at a high level all your characters will invariably sound like you.

Strategic Imagination

This is primarily concerned with ‘what could be…’. It’s the ability to spot opportunities and visualise what might happen if you were to take them. People who have an excellent strategic imagination will have a realistic understanding of their own skills, and be able to spot opportunities to develop

For us as writers, we need to be able to think about the limits of our abilities and our development. I would never begin to write a fantasy novel, I don’t have the staying power. I’ve played out the scenario in my head and can see me getting paralysed by the different writing requirements. Perhaps as I become more confident in my writing — but at the moment my strategic imagination is giving that eventuality a big thumbs down.

If it helps you to give strategic imagination a catchy name, then you can call it ‘wisdom’.

Emotional Imagination

This is a slightly trickier one to define. It’s concerned with manifesting emotional dispositions and extending them into scenarios. We need imagination to fuel our emotional states, we need to imagine the monsters to feel fear, imagine the scenarios playing out in our lives to make us feel anxious.

As writers, we need to be aware of our emotions and the emotions of human beings more generally. If we know how we can create fear, how to create sadness, laughter and we have the ability to play on those emotions — then we can generate form and structure that plays into this facet of our audience’s mindsets. Any time you’re starting to feel a lump in your throat whilst watching fiction, give a round of applause to the writer. They just hacked your brain.

Dreams

These are an unconscious form of imagination that we do when we’re asleep. Scientists are still deciding what these crazy little night visions are all about — but for those of us that dream, it can be a fun and sometimes scary way to access our imagination.

Dreams are great for writers. And I mean genuinely great. I strongly recommend keeping a pad and pen by your bed. Some of the best dreams I’ve had make the short list for pitches to production companies.

As your unconscious mind often deals with conscious problems whilst you sleep — you may find that the answers to your scripting problems appear fully formed in the morning (please please please please let that be the case!)

Memory Reconstruction

When we retrieve our memories of people, objects and events we use our imagination to regenerate the images. Memories are subconscious stored bits of information dragged into our conscious brain and our imagination often fills the gaps where memory hasn’t been curated properly.

A large part of my writing is memory reconstruction. I write conversations that I’ve had, I write people that I’ve met, I write about my relationships with real people and I give them different names. A lot of who we are and what we do goes into our writing. Memories made flesh.

Conclusion

Imagination is key to writing. It’s the engine that drives creativity. Imagining is key to human existence, not just for writers but for all of us. Without an imagination we cannot function emotionally, our memories wouldn’t work, and we’d lack the capacity to travel forwards or backwards in time. The strength of our imagination may be what makes us unique as a species.

For those of us that make a living by monetising our imagination — it’s important to keep this engine well oiled and functional. This isn’t something passive that happens. You have to take active steps on how to keep it running.

There are techniques you can use.

But sharing those techniques is for another day and a different article. Today I have a fairly hectic schedule of writing to adhere to. I hope that you’ve found this article informative and useful and that you’re already connecting the dots and working out which bits of your own imagination you will need to work on.

The full details on the 8 types of imagination can be found here:

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Ask any corporate employer in Malaysia what they want from graduates and they will give you a list of skills lacking in the local cohort of graduates. In fact, they have been doing this for decades, graduates have never been good enough for seasoned managers. Perhaps that is why entry level salaries for graduates are only around RM2,000 per month, barely above the minimum wage.

Employers will talk about self-confidence, the ability to communicate concepts and ideas and basic creative and problem-solving as basic skills that are lacking. For Gen Z they now include an absence of loyalty to the company, a lack of soft skills, professional etiquette and in-person experience due to virtual relationships built on phone Apps.

This problem is not new to local management educators. Existing weaknesses within management qualifications today have been covered in a previous article. This rigidness has led to graduates that present lots of issues when they were placed in front of potential employers who want prospective employees to show what they have during interviews.

Many local universities added communication workshops in their courses, some adding short courses on creativity and problem solving. Then around seven years ago some universities and colleges outsourced this problem to the UK based Chartered Management Institute (CMI) awarding a ‘dual certificate’ at the end of the courses.

The intention was to develop management and leadership skills for individuals, showing them how to work in teams through coaching and mentoring. There was meant to be a large focus on building communication and stakeholder relations skills and improving approaches to planning so that students could be more innovative. This was all intended to have a practical focus.

In fact, very few of these programmes were delivered by the CMI with their local partners and what little was provided was often online, focused on low-cost ‘management style’ sharing sessions on diversity, equity and inclusion, empathy for other cultures, promoting women in leadership or focusing on sustainability or environmental, social and governance (ESG). This is agenda driven advocacy not practical management and leadership training.

As a result, the burden of practical management education was left to existing lecturers, who usually come from an academic background. Most have never had a job outside of a university and are poorly equipped to prepare students for the challenges of the new labour market as employees let alone as managers.

Almost all academics, even in business schools, have never set-up and run their own businesses and the outcomes for graduates show this huge gap. Around 90% of Malaysian graduates look for jobs in an over-supplied labour market, with almost two million winding up underemployed in non-graduate jobs. Almost half of graduates are unemployed, underemployed or outside of the labour market.

Only 10% of graduates set up their own businesses or micro-enterprises growing to local, regional or global business powerhouses.

To tackle this there were new train-the-trainer sessions for the academics, delivered by external ‘expert consultants’ with ‘industry experience’ but no academic credentials. In the end very little, if anything from the original management curricula was changed as academics returned to the classroom and opened their old textbooks and slides again. As a result, employers still have the same perceptions of the local cohort of graduates.

Moving to the future in management education

The first thing that must be done is to understand the difference between learning management theories and practices on the one hand and on the other, organizing, communicating and solving problems creatively and pragmatically in practice. Learning how to work in groups requires a lot of practice and mentoring. In essence, the theory of management and practicing as a manager are two separate fields of study.

Once this is understood, universities and colleges can then tackle the problem by creating a stream of practical education within their management courses. This should not be just an add-on group assignment and presentation but a whole semester project in tackling a business problem or even starting a simple business enterprise from scratch.

This will involve developing specific workstreams on how to organize and deal with the forces that promote and inhibit efficient organization, how to communicate and present ideas effectively and how to use creativity, and problem solving in practice.

Students must learn how use and integrate all these skills at the same time within a workplace. All this cannot be undertaken within classroom formats, special facilities must be prepared.

In fact, in large multinationals special learning spaces are available to train staff. For example, retail giants have mock stores where managers learn how to run customer and operations systems effectively. Global hotel chains have student-run facilities with restaurants, guest rooms and front-desk operations on-campus.

In the 1980s, Swinburne University of Technology developed a Management Behavioural Laboratory (MBL) that contained several meeting rooms and office sets, where students would run preset exercises without teacher interference for a day. The area is decked out with cameras and microphones and their activities recorded. The groups would then be given feedback at the end of the day as to positive and negative behaviours and results.

These are only a few examples of what can be done but moving into this practical management education realm will very quickly lead to very positive results for local student cohorts.

For the universities and colleges this requires both an intellectual and financial investment. It also requires a significant change in mindset and leadership, not just in Business Schools but across all subjects and student cohorts. However, such an approach would very quickly enhance the reputations of universities and colleges that went in that direction.

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My latest in The Vibes

MANY Malaysian students pursue some form of management studies at universities. These include BBAs, MBAs, DBAs, and qualifications regarding entrepreneurship.

The problem with such degrees is that they don’t necessarily lead to employment, where many graduates remain unemployed for longer periods than graduates in science-related courses.

There are a number of weaknesses within management qualifications in Malaysia. These problems range from the materials contained within the courses offered, the methods of teaching, and the experience of those who teach these qualifications.

Curriculum

Traditionally, a university faculty would spend a great deal of effort on developing a new curriculum. Most often, the process would take a year or more and cost the salaries of one or two senior academics.

However, in Malaysia, many, if not most, universities take shortcuts by ‘cutting and pasting’ bits and pieces of other university curricula with similar courses.

Sometimes, Malaysian academic staff recycle material from another university that is serving a market in a different culture and economy.

For example, curricula developed in the urban United States, UK, or Australia will be post-industrial rather than those of a developing economy like Malaysia. This will have a great effect on material content and may not be suitable for Malaysian cohorts.

In an overseas university, a new curriculum might be developed by very senior and experienced academics. In Malaysia, junior academics will be requested to undertake the task.

Within the entrepreneurship domain, there is more teaching about what entrepreneurship is rather than how to become an entrepreneur. Many of these courses will include standard management subjects to fill in the course.

Method of teaching

Business subjects tend to be taught in Malaysia through textbooks. A particular textbook is usually set for a course subject. So, students will most likely be obligated to buy many textbooks throughout their course of studies.

Exam questions are most often taken from textbook content, which restricts the scope of studies, discouraging students from seeking information further afield.

Management subjects tend to be restricted to classrooms where the educational support structure is minimal.

Facilities like management behavioural laboratories are absent, thus students tend to rely upon textbook-based structured teaching.

In entrepreneurship, start-up labs may exist. However, virtually none of them are connected to any group of practademics who can guide students to a start-up.

Those who teach management

In Malaysia, those who teach management subjects at universities tend to be full-time academics with no working business experience.

Making nasi lemak at home for sale at the pasar malam is excluded. In addition, there are many staff teaching changes within faculties, so lecturers are hindered from becoming experts in any field. One semester, a lecturer may teach human resources and the next semester transfer to marketing.

Coupled with textbook-based approaches to teaching led by inexperienced staff, a business subject may just become a chapter-by-chapter reading session based on textbook PowerPoint slides.

Other impediments

Staff have little time to immerse themselves in the depth of the subjects they teach. An academic is smothered by writing up things like staff attendance, confirmation of what was covered within the class,

Outcome-Based Education (OBE) requirements are based upon Bloom’s Taxonomy, which is not an evidence-based theory and may be outdated in online societies. Academics may also have to follow ISO guidelines if their faculty has accreditation.

Given the faculty requirements for academic staff to meet the above requirements, there is no room left for staff to prepare innovative classroom activities.

Such is the plight of Malaysian business education, where it needs to follow textbook theories, excluding useful local business theories.

Management education in Malaysia lacks the passion that academics need to exhibit and pass on to students in their classes. There is very little to inspire students today in business courses.

Business degrees tend to be an afterthought within many universities and are seen as a cash cow, due to low start-up and operating costs. Students today are the victims of this. – May 6, 2026

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By Murray Hunter and Geoffrey Williams

FOR decades, the British education sales pitch has been as seductive as it is simple: obtain a prestigious, “equivalent” British degree at a fraction of the cost without ever leaving Malaysia.

The British universities’ Transnational Education (TNE) model, enacted through twinning programmes and franchise campuses with private higher education institutions, has long been the crown jewel of Malaysia’s target to become an international higher education hub.

Last month, this vision was given a fresh coat of paint and relaunched through the UK Department for Business and Trade (DBT), backed by the British High Commission in Kuala Lumpur, which launched a new handbook designed to help UK universities expand their TNE footprint here.

With an estimated 43,000 Malaysians currently enrolled in UK-certified programmes, the business of British education is booming.

Education is already a major component of British service-based exports to Malaysia, making up at least 14 per cent of British exports to Malaysia.

Beneath the glossy brochures and high-level launches, the structural integrity of the “UK Degree” in Malaysia is beginning to crumble.

A recent legislative shift in the Home Office in London has exposed a disturbing reality for nearly 850 medical students at Newcastle University Medicine Malaysia (NUMed), leaving them in a state of limbo that threatens to turn their personal RM700,000 education investments into “stranded assets.”

The ‘Physical Presence’ Wall

The reason that led to the crisis is the Medical Training (Prioritisation) Act 2026, which became law on March 5.

This Act fundamentally rewrites the rules for the UK Foundation Programme (UKFP), which is required for medical graduates to achieve full General Medical Council (GMC) registration and practice in the UK.

While NUMed degrees in Malaysia are marketed as “equivalent” to those issued by Newcastle University in Britain, the new law introduces a “physical presence” requirement for study.

Priority for training posts is now reserved exclusively for those who physically studied within the UK.

For the 107 students in the current graduating cohort and the 750 following them, this means being relegated to a “reserve list.”

In a system where UK-based graduates consistently fill all available slots, the reserve list is, for most, leads to a career dead end after putting so much time and effort into obtaining the local degree.

For the international students who make up nearly half of NUMed’s body, the situation is even more cynical.

They face a “policy wall” at both ends. They are locked out of the UK by the 2026 Act, yet they remain barred from practising within the Malaysian healthcare system due to rigid citizenship requirements for housemanship.

This occurs despite a “vacancy paradox” in Malaysia, where over 5,000 housemanship spots sit empty while highly trained, locally-based talent is left to rot on the sidelines.

A Pattern of Devaluation: The CMI Factor

This is not an isolated incident of regulatory misalignment, but it is part of a widening pattern of “qualification fraud” and the watering down of accreditation integrity in the Malaysian private education sector.

The writers have previously highlighted that regarding the Chartered Management Institute (CMI) accreditations, there is now a growing disconnect between what is marketed to students and what is delivered on the ground.

Such qualifications may have the same name as the British counterparts, but the course content is very different.

In many instances, Malaysian private and some public universities dangle “dual certification” or “professional accreditation” from bodies like the CMI to justify premium fees, but this is totally incorrect due to local non-accreditation and the qualifications not being recognised in the UK.

However, much like the NUMed crisis, the value of these certificates often evaporates on closer inspection.

CMI certificates in Malaysia are sold through commercial agency arrangements with Malaysian universities and training centres without the rigorous oversight from UK accreditation agencies.

As such, the “equivalence” does not translate into professional recognition in the global market, where such certificates become little more than an expensive piece of wallpaper.

The NUMed case is simply the most terminal example of this trend, where the “British brand” is used as a marketing front for a product that has been functionally gutted by legislative or regulatory changes.

The Ethics of the “Equivalent” Product

While NUMed is not responsible for the whims of the British government, the institutional response raises serious ethical questions.

When students on the “reserve list” are reportedly told by the university to simply “look at different countries,” it represents a total collapse of the value proposition they were sold.

How can a university continue aggressive recruitment, ramping up batches to 170 students, while a legislative lockout is in full effect?

If a qualification no longer provides the professional access to the UK that it once did, the marketing narratives and, crucially, the fee structures must reflect that diminished utility.

To charge an international student RM700,000 for a degree marketed with a promise of UK GMC registration, while knowing that path is effectively sealed, borders on predatory marketing.

The higher education institutions that offer such qualifications must take responsibility towards their student cohorts and firstly raise the alarm, and secondly work towards finding some solutions for their graduates.

Students’ “profound sense of betrayal”

Speaking on condition of anonymity, a student representative shared the feelings of the NUMed students, “There is a profound sense of betrayal; we invested years and significant fees into a UK-accredited degree, only to be retroactively devalued and left professionally stranded.”

NUMed Response

A spokesperson for NUMed said: “We recognise that the UK Government’s recent changes to medical training prioritisation in the UK are deeply distressing and unsettling for our students, particularly those who had hoped to pursue their careers in the UK.

Currently, graduates from NUMed are placed on a reserve list, and while this reflects a change in prioritisation, they still retain an opportunity to be allocated a training post.”

“We have consistently been clear that access to postgraduate training is not guaranteed; however, we fully acknowledge that the ability of many graduates to progress into the UK Foundation Programme in recent years has understandably shaped student expectations.”

“Our immediate priority is to support our students by helping them explore all available options, including alternative routes to General Medical Council registration, such as a housemanship, which is only available to Malaysian students, alongside providing information on international medical career pathways and dedicated careers events.”

“The MBBS degree awarded by NUMed remains a General Medical Council-accredited Primary Medical Qualification. It continues to be recognised as a high-quality UK medical degree, enabling graduates to pursue medical registration and training opportunities in a wide range of countries.

“NUMed graduates have a strong track record of progressing into successful medical careers across the UK and globally, and we remain fully committed to supporting our current students to achieve the same outcomes.”

A Litmus Test for TNE

The NUMed crisis is a cautionary tale for the massive expansion of UK universities into markets like India and across ASEAN.

It reveals that “equivalence” is a fragile concept that can be revoked by a single change in regulation, leaving students as the ultimate losers in a high-stakes game of educational arbitrage.

The Malaysian government has a golden opportunity to solve its 5,000-post vacancy by creating specialised pathways for these locally-trained international graduates.

Simultaneously, the Ministry of Higher Education must demand greater transparency and follow-up on the position of Prime Minister Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim, who said only last week that universities must stop “churning out certificates” and not become “certificate factories”.

We can no longer allow UK TNE providers, British franchise campuses and twinning partnerships to hide behind “institutional silence.” Regulatory transparency must be enforced.

If a UK degree from a Malaysian campus no longer opens the door to the UK, the brochure needs to say so on the front page before the student signs away nearly a million Ringgit for a dream that is no longer for sale. – May 4, 2026

Originally published in The Vibes

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My latest column in The Vibes

TODAY’S education is crucial for tomorrow’s society. Society’s culture is primarily framed through education that took place over the last generation.

In Malaysia, the issue of education is extremely controversial.

Yet, society is continuously changing, while the evolution of education is almost stagnant and lagging behind the needs of society and the people living within it.

What is needed within today’s education system goes far beyond science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM), and the medium of instruction.

Somewhere between 48-52 per cent of secondary students don’t go on to tertiary education, going straight into ‘general’ society after secondary school.

Education should be a catalyst to nurture the youth of today in growing up, learning to not just survive, but prosper.

Education must fulfil these aims rather than just being a tool to ensure social conformity by conditioning students to accept their current place in society, as expected of them.

Education should prepare people for life challenges ahead.

Education should nurture students to be able to perform to their true potential in society. Their potential is certainly much higher than where most end up today.

The new needs of today’s education

Today’s education should not just be seen as a forerunner for tertiary education.

Secondary education must prepare Malaysians for the real world out there today.

The most important lesson that anybody can take away from school is how to learn.

So many students go to university and have never been taught how to actually learn.

This is a basic skill the education system doesn’t provide today.

Students must be taught how to solve problems.

This is an expansive area, as there are many different types of problems with different approaches needed to find solutions to different types of problems.

Solving problems often requires creativity. Creativity is a means to innovate, which is a means to add value and quality to what someone is doing.

Creativity and innovation are a necessary lifetime skill, that is not just required of those becoming an entrepreneur or small business operator, but the general community at large in seeking life satisfaction.

Critical thinking is another important skill that students are not taught in school.

Most subjects currently being taught lack this aspect, even though schools claim curricula are based upon Bloom’s Taxonomy, a widely used framework in education used for classifying learning objectives and skills.

Lessons should be aimed at teaching the above skills.

This should be permeating through school curricula.

History class should teach people how to go about research. Language comprehension should invoke critical thinking.

Assignments should be aimed at teaching people how to present their ideas to others throughout their life.

Secondary education lacks the framework to teach people how to find opportunities. This includes both opportunities for business and opportunities for life enhancement.

Then students should be able to utilise their critical thinking to evaluate opportunities they can see, and then creativity and innovation to set out paths they can use to pursue these opportunities.

In this paradigm, life is itself an entrepreneurial venture, so entrepreneurship should be part of all school curricula.

This would reflect the fact that only around 50 per cent of secondary school graduates go on to university or other higher education. Many students will disappear into what is called the ‘informal economy’.

Students must be taught to be able to generate ideas and develop the skills they need to fulfil them.

Consequently, business and home economics skills should be put into the curriculum once again.

Students must also be given an introduction to vocational or TVET activities. This will enable some to realise they have good aptitudes for ‘green collar’ activities, which, coupled with simple business skills, allow them to financially benefit.

TVET should be promoted as an attractive education path to students

Finally, students indeed have religion within their courses. However, this doesn’t necessarily translate to ethics.

There should also be ethics classes within schools. This is particularly needed to assist in steering future citizens away from corruption.

As mentioned at the beginning of this piece, education shapes society’s culture in the future.

Students must be taught to ask questions during their education and learn to be assertive.

The massively high power-distance, where subordinates never question superiors, is blocking creativity and innovation across workplaces.

This doesn’t mean that students should be overbearing and obnoxious. Rather, students should learn to be assertive enough to learn.

This approach will help to pull down the high power-distance that exists within Malaysian culture, which will hopefully lead to a more creative workforce in the future.

Today, technology is advancing very quickly and drastically affecting the workplace.

These issues must be tackled immediately, otherwise the education will be teaching people to participate in a workforce that they aren’t ready for in the future.

As students are learning skills which are no longer needed within a changing society.

This means integrating artificial intelligence (AI) and showing students how to be creative with it and master it as a tool, rather than allowing it to take away potential jobs.

The job market is rapidly changing, and the education system must follow suit rather than remain stagnant.

Today’s organisations and corporations are becoming ‘soulless’ because people cannot critically think, solve problems and adequately present new ideas.

Humans are now operating as ‘zombies’ in many industries today.

The advice above would revolutionise the education systems. It’s not about allocating more resources, but using existing resources to fulfil the above objectives.

This can be done almost immediately. It just needs the will to do it. – May 2, 2026

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Purported author of slanderous letter Sarah Chidgey (see letter below)

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In a throwback to the colonial era, a letter purportedly written by a British civil servant in London, Sarah Chidgey, Head of International Education in the British government’s Department for Business and Trade (DBT), is circulating in the Malaysian higher education system.

Ms. Chidgey’s missive rehearses several false pretences made in support of their client the Chartered Management Institute (CMI), which is embroiled in a legal and reputational battle related to the selling of unaccredited certificates through commercial agency arrangements with Malaysian universities and training companies.

The UK government dispatch from a lower middle-ranking bureaucrat is addressed to the most senior people in the Malaysian higher education system including Dr Anessee Ibrahim the Secretary General of the Malaysian Higher Education Ministry (MOHE) and Dr Mohammad Shatar Sabran the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the Malaysian Qualifications Agency (MQA).

The objective of the letter, which has so far not been verified as authentic by the DBT, appears to be to insist that CMI certificates sold in Malaysia meet all accreditation regulations in the United Kingdom (UK).

The implication is that Malaysia, as a former colony, should accept the authority of its erstwhile colonial masters, notwithstanding its own sovereign law and regulations with which CMI does not comply.

Despite ongoing litigation and regulatory investigations Ms. Chidgey’s letter further claims that, “CMI are now being specifically targeted with accusations of wrong-doing and demonstrably false claims about the legitimacy of the Dual Award model.”

The letter has come amid several other revelations about the accreditation and recognition of so-called “UK degrees” offered at British franchise universities in Malaysia. One example of this is the medical degree at Newcastle University in Malaysia (NUMed), which the British do not recognize for direct entry into medical training in the UK.

Claims by the Department of Business and Trade concerning CMI

Ms. Chidgey, claiming to act for the DBT, insists that the UK government is not aware of any compliance issues relating to CMI global operations. This is despite multiple UK government investigations and public domain coverage in local and regional media of compliance concerns related to the commercial sales of CMI certificates.

She claims falsely that the Malaysian MOHE investigation into CMI exonerated them, but she left out the MOHE conclusion that CMI must contact the MQA for formal regulatory compliance.

Following that meeting, MQA advised CMI to complete a formal equivalency assessment of their certificates and issued a public statement that universities should stop selling unaccredited certificates such as those sold by CMI.

In support of CMI Sarah insisted that one CMI Level 7 certificate had achieved Malaysian Qualifications Framework (MQF) equivalency status as a TVET certificate in December 2025.

She failed to mention that this is not an accreditation status, nor that the CMI has been selling unregulated certificates since 2017 and currently has many Level 4 and Level 5 certificates sold through Malaysian universities that are not regulated by the MQA.

In the opening paragraphs of her letter Sarah mentions the UK certification bodies including Ofqual, Qualifications Wales, CCEA Regulation, and the Scottish Qualifications Authority. After a thorough investigation by the writer, all these UK authorities have confirmed that no CMI certificates or diplomas offered outside the UK are accredited by them. Local accreditation outside the UK is solely a matter for local accreditation agencies, in the CMI case this is local accreditation is absent.

Personalization, defamation and conflict of interest

In an extraordinary departure from professional, intergovernmental etiquette, Sarah Chidgey personalizes her defence of CMI by attacking, “… individuals [who] continue to undermine and disparage the operating models of UK Professional Bodies in Malaysia, specifically the Chartered

Management Institute and the Dual Award model.”

She goes on to solicit and importune the Malaysian government for help to protect the CMI and to attack the “individuals” by jointly condemning them in public and officially denouncing the evidence of malpractice at CMI. This borders on defamation and is wholly inappropriate for a civil servant.

Ms. Chidgey is less forthcoming about her own personal interests in the CMI. There is reason to believe that she has at least one family member in a senior position in the CMI.

She is also a member of the CMI International Advisory Committee, despite there being no public record of official UK government approval for that appointment. This membership allows her access to networks of senior business leaders and royalty in the UK and comes with remuneration for attendance expenses, time off work and travel and accommodation for meetings.

The letter was provided to the CMI CEO Ann Franke which shows a close relationship with the CMI and its senior officers which breaches the standards of civil service independence.

Examination of Sarah Chidgey’s letter can lead to only two conclusions. First, she has gone rogue by using an official DBT letter for fraudulent purposes to help and support her friends and family.

Second, if the letter is an official correspondence, then it appears to be the official policy of DBT to lie to foreign governments about the UK products and services they are promoting for export around the world.

The DBT have been contacted for comment on the fact of Sarah Chidgey’s letter and its contents and also to comment on whether it is authentic and represents official UK government policy. In addition, Sarah Chidgey has been contacted directly. At the time of writing, they have not replied.

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This is my latest column in The Vibes

QUALIFICATIONS fraud is quite easy to understand, it is passing off certificates as being genuine, accredited and regulated when they are not.

For a country like Malaysia, having a reputation for fake certificates or slack regulation of qualifications is a direct threat to the aims of the Malaysian Higher Education Blueprint (MHEB) 2026-2035.

It also leaves students who have borrowed money to attend universities and colleges victims receiving certificates and diplomas that have no accreditation status in Malaysia.

Simply put, qualification fraud means misrepresenting non-regulated certificates and diplomas as being regulated by a national accreditation authority such as the Malaysian Qualifications Agency (MQA).

Historically, Malaysia has been very susceptible to qualifications fraud due to the proliferation of British and other overseas degrees touted by private education institutes around the country. This went unregulated until the MQA was formed back in 2007.

However, even with the assistance of the MQA there are several unaccredited foreign qualifications still on offer from both public and private higher education institutions in Malaysia.

Some institutions offer UK degrees and qualifications promoting them as being “British Accredited.”

However, investigations with the UK authorities found a different story. The UK accreditation agencies made it clear that any UK qualification offered outside of the UK by an overseas higher education institution is not regulated by the UK authorities.

In November 2024, the MQA CEO Datuk Professor Dr. Mohammad Shatar Sabran issued a stern warning.

No qualifications should be issued by local higher education institutions unless they are accredited in Malaysia by the MQA.

The latest case to gain attention are the Level 4 and 5 certificates issued by the Chartered Management Institute (CMI) from the UK.

Unaccredited CMI certificates are offered through as many as 21 local higher education institutions.

It is apparent that in most cases the universities involved were not aware of the accreditation issues when they offered CMI certificates as ‘Dual Accredited’ degrees, packaging them with their own valid certificates.

Fortunately, as a direct response to the controversy, several universities have already taken decisive action.

Asia Pacific University (APU) has stopped advertising CMI certificates, the Malaysia University of Science and Technology (MUST) has reportedly ended its contact with CMI.

It is also understood that UiTM is also reviewing their position in offering CMI certificates through their campuses.

A number of other universities are also in the process of reviewing CMI certificates following the lead of APU and MUST.

Even though the MQA has stressed that higher education institutions issuing unaccredited qualifications erodes public trust in the higher education system and may cause students to invest time and resources in credentials that lack legal and professional standing, the Ministry of Higher Education (MOHE) has been lax in enforcing the issue of accreditation.

The ministry has been contacted several times by the writer but has so far not provided any reply or public clarification.

The ministry’s current silence is raising concerns among stakeholders who are calling for more robust regulatory enforcement to protect students and the reputation and integrity of Malaysian higher education.

Questions are also being raised about Malaysian higher education institutions relying on additional endorsement of local degrees by foreign organizations rather than emphasizing the quality of MQA regulation alone.

The dangers of qualification fraud extend beyond individual cases, posing systemic risks.

The circulation of unregulated certificates undermines confidence in Malaysian graduates and diminishes the national reputation for academic excellence.

Employers struggle to distinguish genuine qualifications from fraudulent ones, leading to unfair hiring practices and lost opportunities for deserving candidates.

Moreover, students who unknowingly pursue such credentials may face setbacks in their career progression, unable to secure jobs or further study due to invalid certification.

Some Malaysian universities are now taking the matter into their own hands by adopting blockchain-powered “Zero Fake Certificates” credentialing through a system called BlockchainCert by a local organisation called MasChain.

Such tamperproof and instantly accessible and verifiable digital certificate systems are adding integrity to Malaysian higher education.

To safeguard the future of higher education in Malaysia, stakeholders must prioritise transparency and regulation.

The MQA’s guidance highlights the importance of verifying programme accreditation and ensuring that qualifications are recognised both locally and internationally.

By addressing qualification fraud proactively, Malaysia can protect its students, uphold the integrity of its educational institutions, and maintain its standing as a centre of academic excellence in the region. – April 22, 2026

The observations reflect the writer’s personal insights and do not necessarily represent the official stance of The Vibes.com

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Qualifications fraud is an escalating threat to the integrity and credibility of Malaysia’s higher education sector with senior figures promoting unaccredited courses and the higher education minister remaining silent.

The ongoing controversy surrounding the Chartered Management Institute (CMI) has brought to light concerns about the legitimacy of certificates issued without proper regulation in Malaysia, sparking robust debate among students, educators, and employers about the authenticity of qualifications and their impact on career prospects.

In November 2024, the Malaysian Qualifications Agency (MQA) CEO, Dato’ Prof. Dr. Mohammad Shatar bin Sabran, issued a stern warning: certificates should not be issued for courses or qualifications unregulated within Malaysia.

The MQA stressed that such practices erode public trust in the higher education system and may cause students to invest time and resources in credentials that lack legal and professional standing. This warning is a crucial reminder for institutions to adhere strictly to national accreditation standards and for students to remain vigilant when selecting their courses.

As a direct response to the controversy, several universities have taken decisive action. Asia Pacific University (APU) has stopped advertising CMI certificates, while Malaysia University of Science and Technology (MUST) has reportedly ended its contract with CMI. These moves underscore the seriousness of the issue and the commitment of some Malaysian universities to uphold academic integrity.

Elsewhere the former higher education director general Dato’ Seri Dr. Mohamed Mustafa Ishak is actively promoting the CMI as chair of its regional board and his successor as Vice-Chancellor of Universiti Utara Malaysia (UUM), Professor Dr. Ahmad Martadha Mohamed sells unaccredited certificates from the CMI in the Othman Yeop Abdullah Graduate School of Business (OYAGSB) at UUM.

Former higher education director general Mohamed Mustafa Ishak (left) is actively promoting the CMI as chair of its regional board and his successor as Vice-Chancellor of Universiti Utara Malaysia (UUM), Professor Dr. Ahmad Martadha Mohamed (centre) is selling unaccredited CMI certificates at UUM, meanwhile the Malaysian higher education minister Zambry Abdul Kadir (right) remains silent

Malaysia’s largest university, Universiti Teknologi MARA (UiTM) is also actively supporting and celebrating issuing unaccredited certificates from the CMI.

Despite the active involvement of leading public universities in selling unaccredited CMI certificates, the warning from MQA remains unenforced and although the Ministry of Higher Education (MOHE), led by its minister Datuk Seri Diraja Dr. Zambry Abdul Kadir and secretary general Datuk Dr. Anesee bin Ibrahim, is aware of the issue, so far no public action has been taken.

The ministry’s current silence has raised concerns among stakeholders who are calling for more robust regulatory intervention to protect students and the reputation of Malaysian higher education.

Questions are also being raised about the undignified reliance of Malaysian universities on endorsement by foreign organisations embroiled in legal action in Malaysia and concerns about misrepresentation of their accreditation around the world.

This contradicts the MOHE position while preparing the new Higher Education Plan 2025-2035 when Zambry repeatedly reminded Malaysians that no foreign consultants were used in dictating the future of Malaysia’s higher education.

The dangers of qualification fraud extend beyond individual cases, posing systemic risks. The circulation of unregulated certificates undermines confidence in Malaysian graduates and diminishes the national reputation for academic excellence.

Employers struggle to distinguish genuine qualifications from fraudulent ones, leading to unfair hiring practices and lost opportunities for deserving candidates. Moreover, students who unknowingly pursue such credentials may face setbacks in their career progression, unable to secure jobs or further study due to invalid certification.

To safeguard the future of Malaysian higher education, stakeholders must prioritise transparency and regulation. The MQA’s guidance highlights the importance of verifying programme accreditation and ensuring that qualifications are recognised both locally and internationally.

By addressing qualification fraud proactively, Malaysia can protect its students, uphold the integrity of its educational institutions, and maintain its standing as a centre of academic excellence in the region.

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Universities and other institutions of higher learning are facing major challenges. Apart from a small number of legacy-branded institutions, many are facing existential liquidity problems. In the US alone, around 30 universities are closing each year. Universities have become bureaucratically bloated and rigid with administrative systems that have done nothing to improve the learning experiences of students. The focus is now on issuing “qualifications” which are seen as “products” rather than recognition that someone has reached a certain level of knowledge and understanding.

In addition, universities face several other problems today. Declining birth rates mean fewer enrollments. As developing countries advance, more universities in these countries are created making the number of international students dwindle.

Tertiary education has become so expensive, many younger people are questioning the wisdom of taking up post-secondary education, especially when starting salaries are no different from those without qualifications. Most graduates who take up post-secondary education are burdened with debt for years. Those who did not go to university working in similar jobs are financially better off because they are not burdened with debt. Student debt is now a major issue in education detracting from its appeal today. University education no longer guarantees a career it once did.

The content of many degrees, particularly in the business and economics domain have been “dumbed down” to the lowest common denominator. Lecturers are no longer renowned industry experts they once were and teaching manuals have been modularized for simplistic understanding. Most university lecturers today have little or no industry experience.

Many degree courses like entrepreneurship are better taught through the vocational system, as the art of entrepreneurship is best learnt rather than taught. Successful programs rely upon mentorship and project-based learning, rather than curriculum based subject material.

In many industries today, there are just not the jobs available to absorb graduates. Most jobs, except for family business fail to provide any upward career mobility in the jobs they offer. This approach is practiced through most industries today. With more comprehensive applications of artificial intelligence (AI) being developed, numerous jobs through both the public and private sector are very quickly disappearing. This includes clerks, accountants, administrative, legal assistant jobs, and other entry level management jobs, just to mention a few. Graduates are now forced to compete with mature workers who have retrained for what available jobs are left, mostly in retailing. This issue becomes worse during economic downturns.

People just do not need degrees unless they want to enter specialized and skilled areas of work. Consequently, there is a need for universities to pivot away from ‘traditional’ curricula and focus on ‘micro-courses’. There is a drastic need for consolidation of all programs, especially hybrid courses that were aimed as revenue raisers. The nature of universities must change.

Rethinking the university

The management of most universities do see what is coming, but are entrapped within massive bureaucracies that cannot easily be reduced on an incremental basis. Insolvency faces those institutions that fail to change, unless they are propped up by government subsidies and other hand-outs. Many are brand gouging with long earned reputations that have been developed over decades in attempts to remain financially buoyant.

However, universities outside the Ivy League cannot afford to do this as a survival strategy. They must use more radical strategies to downsize. These institutions must transform whole business and management faculties into micro-course providers that offer relevant materials to people wishing to enter the workforce. Business schools must reinvent themselves and become life-long educators focusing on micro-courses. Business and economics degrees just do not have the value they once did and this market segment be left for large elite institutions, while practical business courses offered as short and part time micro courses to fill real social needs today.

All the bricks and mortar and bureaucratic infrastructure can be shed for efficient clusters of class rooms placed in shopping malls or community centres. Some of these education needs can go back to community and vocational colleges that once existed in the past. Education must be delivered to those who want and need it at affordable rates. Some institutions are developing hybrid ‘free’ courses that focus on outcomes rather than awards.

Entrepreneurship education will have an exciting new future in vocational centres where teaching is aimed at nurturing entrepreneurs, not awarding certificates. Entrepreneurs do not need degrees; they need nurturing and mentorship. An entrepreneur’s ambition is success in their business endeavors, not a degree.

Within the engineering sphere, the current state of most ‘western economies’ has changed the need for types of courses needed. Engineering education should be directly related to the geo-social regions it serves. Mechanical, construction, electric, electronic, biological, and computer engineering courses have different demand in different areas depending upon the structure of the economy. These schools can go back to the institutes of higher learning they historically came from. Technology institutes once served communities very well and should be given the opportunity to do so once again.

Arts, humanities, and teacher education can return to community colleges. The vocational system can expand where the old ‘blue collar/white collar’ separation of career paths can be merged into the same educational institutions. Many successful businesses are started by entrepreneurs with ‘blue collar’ backgrounds in strong service-based economies. This is where entrepreneurial education will thrive with a mixed technology/business education nexus community colleges can provide.

Such an approach will eliminate the needless monstrosities that traditional universities create. There is no need for these bureaucracies to support today’s education needs. For example, virtual libraries can now replace the need for large library buildings at major universities. IT can replace buildings that housed administrative staff. The costs of national education will come down immensely and student debt can be drastically lowered.

This is not to say all universities should be downsized. There is still a place for elite education. With fewer universities, the relative rarity of degrees and other post graduate qualifications will increase their social value.

Not everyone needs a degree today, unlike the past where a degree was once a prerequisite for employment. Elite universities will have a mission of returning business and economics education to the high standards of last century, rather than of the ‘fast food’ variety of today. Medicine, nursing, physics and chemistry, new fields of engineering and science have their places in universities. Research should be directly supported by industry, and where fundamental research is involved supported by government grants.

The effect of the above will be to bring value back to education and a debt free education. Much smaller and compact education units are more efficient and will bring down the cost of education and prevent the collapse of many universities in the near future.

It will require enlightened university management to make this move, otherwise creative destruction will eventually overtake them. There must be more public discussion about what education should look like in the coming decades. We had the answers a couple of decades ago, but many institutes of higher learning wanted to become universities and saw growth as a key objective. This made them vulnerable to the conditions of today. It is time for many to go back to institutes of higher education once were with more efficient cost base without lowering the quality of education anymore.

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A document dump released by the Chartered Management Institute (CMI), has revealed that the royal charity has been and may still be under investigation in the last two months by their regulators in the United Kingdom.

The documents include emails from the Office of Qualifications and Examinations Regulation (Ofqual), the Council for the Curriculum, Examinations and Assessment (CCEA) in Northern Ireland and Qualifications Wales.

The emails exchanged between the regulators and the Royal charity confirm that CMI certificates and diplomas offered in Malaysia and other countries were under investigation for qualifications fraud.

The particulars of the investigation have been redacted from the documents in the dumps but they specifically relate to accreditation outside the United Kingdom and possible misrepresentation of their accreditation status by the CMI in their marketing and in their commercial contracts with international partners.

Issues concerning the CMI’s lack of accreditation by UK authorities in Malaysia and other countries outside of the UK have been widely covered over 2-3 years. Regulators in Malaysia have also raised concerns with the CMI on these issues.

The new documents confirm that CMI is currently under investigation by UK accreditation authorities for misleading higher education institutes, universities, and students outside of the UK about their accreditation status.

It is now clear that CMI had presented their certificates and diplomas as accredited when these certificates and diplomas did not meet accreditation criteria overseas from the UK. It also appears the UK accreditation agencies were most concerned over misleading advertising of CMI certificates and diplomas overseas.

The accreditation status of CMI certificates and degrees were also allegedly misrepresented to universities in contracts they signed with CMI to establish commercial franchise agreements across the world. This is allegedly a form of fraud arising from the misrepresentation of the accreditation status to CMI clients and customers that could possibly render all contracts invalid.

CMI has 141 commercial franchise partners in 39 countries according to their International Centres webpage.

Over the last month several universities have stopped or suspended marketing and packaging CMI certificates and diplomas with their programmes. This appears to be the case with Deakin University in Australia which no longer advertises CMI diplomas. This also appears to be the case with Asia Pacific University (APU) and Sunway University in Malaysia.

The Singapore Institute of Management (SIM) has stopped issuing CMI certificates in programmes run with the University of Birmingham due to accreditation concerns and the Malaysian University of Science and Technology (MUST) will not be renewing their CMI certificates for the 2026 intake.

So far CMI has remained silent, causing real concern for higher education partners and students around the world.

It now appears necessary for CMI to make a public statement to clear up the current status of accreditation of certificates and diplomas which are not accredited as claimed in their marketing to students and contracts with commercial partners.

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This piece was written in collaboration with Dr Azly Rahman

Introduction

In concluding our essay on Tawhidic-Singularity as a new philosophy of Islam, we proposed that Muslims need to interpret the core teaching of One-ness from a kaleidoscopic perspective. We asked readers to reflect upon the applicability of Chaos or Complexity Theory to view Islam as an organic and living religion inviting its believers to look at the concept of One-ness as the manifesting of Many-ness. In this essay, we go deeper into the discussion of the soul of the Quran itself and how Muslims could perceive and read it as a postmodern text with multiple-level meanings based on his/her unique life experiences.

We wish to propose the worldview of “Quantum Islam,” as a new way looking at this cultural belief system. We invite readers to think of Islam as more than just unquestioning faith and rites and rituals but as an evolving text to be made alive. The idea of a “living Quran” is a means of perceiving and feeling one’s existence as a world of interconnectedness. This world of deep personal connectivity is a world of the physical, emotional and spiritual self as it exists in the realm of the Universal self as a world designed as a Quantum being in itself.

Multiple Universes and the Quran

Islam is about what cannot at present be explained intrinsically through the science we know today.

The Qu’ran is a deeply layered book of meaning. However, the majority of Muslims have tended to take literal views. The Qu’ran has also foreseen many scientific discoveries and defined the nature of our realities. Such a view of the cognitive and metaphysical nature of the text has been dominant at a time when Islamic philosophy was being conceived, especially in the debates between scholars trained in Greek philosophy with those trying to rid the influence of rationalism in epistemologizing the meaning of existence.

The Qu’ran and Hadiths have shaped the worldview of 20% of the world’s population. But Islam today is viewed as a singular reality, embedded in ‘Arabism’ and ‘hellfire’ paradigms, coercing Muslims to follow literal views, within a ‘carrot and stick’ enlightenment and fear syndrome.

As a consequence Islam has not been the means to a higher level universal wisdom that the Qu’ran can facilitate, if read with this understanding.

Allah rabb al-àlamin, the Lord of the Worlds indicates a multiverse with parallel realities. There are parallel universes mentioned within the Qu’ran that we don’t have access to. These worlds are widely talked about within the Qu’ran, the world of the jinns, as in the verse ”And the jinn race, we had created before, from the fire of a scorching wind” Qur’an (15:27)

The 99 names of Allah also suggest multi-existential paradigms.

Challenges of constructing this multi-universal view

The first challenge is to escape the unipolar world and live in, and transcend to the multipolar world the Qu’ran describes. i.e., atoms can be both a particle and wave and thus be in multiple places at the same time. True realities are multipolar dynamics, rather than unipolar statics.

Thus, to understand the complexity of the environment, we must develop both our personal self-awareness and social awareness. So where reality is multi-layered and kaleidoscopic, layered and deeper meanings can be derived from the chaotic environment we exist within through contemplating the layered intricacies and meanings within the Quran.

Muslims viewing the text of the Qu’ran as a living and evolving one, can find a meaningful guide to life and the universe, which we propose is what Quantum Islam means. What one sees with the naked eye, a phenomenon to be studied is just a level of Reality that we construct cognitively. However as one reads deeper into the meaning of the Quran, one may find the signs and symbols manifesting themselves in newer ways, which we digest and make meaning of through our self-awareness or spirituality.

The second challenge is that we must understand that we are not at the centre of the world. We must override the assumption that modern humankind has adopted in that humans can control nature and nature is here to serve us.

What we think and the assumptions behind our very thoughts may not actually resemble reality, and may not be the truth. Once we shed this egocentric view of the world, we come to realize that we cannot control nature and we must nurture nature. In the Quran it is said: ”Say: He is Allah, He is One, He is Eternal He Begets not nor is He begotten and there is none equal unto Him” Surah Ikhlas 112.

Muslims engaged in a cognitive and metaphysical reading of the Quran may propose that human existence is both physical and conceptual, and that as a Platonic view would content, we are both Forms and Appearance, and that if the self is an invention/creation to manifest the “truth”.

There is a larger truth of “being and nothingness,” in another world of the “unseen,”. This is the idea of corresponding reality of existence. Islam proposes that this view of Quantum state of beingness can only be understood if one understands the meaning of “selflessness” or the “destruction of the Ego,” and to allow the self to be liberated from the confines of a physical and mechanistic world.

The third challenge is to read the question from a “culturally-neutral” perspective. This means stripping the notion that all that is Islam is Arabic and with fallacy, to believe that religious belief is not cultural. This is to begin to believe that to be a Muslim, one need not aspire to be or to become an Arab.

If Islam is a universal truth, it is not ‘Arab-centric’, and many of the rites and rituals cannot be universal, if for example, Islam was to the truth on another planet like Mars. What would Islam be like without the cultural anchors that have grown around it and almost strangled the truth?

If, as the last message of Prophet Muhammad would content — that Islam promotes a universal message of peace – and be viewed as the “final revelation,” and that only 20% of the world’s 1.5 billion Muslims are speakers of the Arabic language, what has been the consequence of Islam as religion that has been too much caught in the semiotics of Arabism? Simply put, why is being Muslim today synonymous of being or looking Arabic?

The three challenges above, namely that we are living in a multipolar world, that our existence is not central to the Universe, and that religion is a cultural construct to present ways for Muslims to view Islam differently. The Quran, in its very first few words of revelation, “Read … in the name of thy Lord who created Thee …” is a clear enough proposition for believers in this religion to “read oneself and to read the world on is living in.” It is an invitation for readers to not only “read the world” but also to “write” a story of one’s life, based on one’s own worldview and to unshackle oneself from being defined by others.

The challenges above are existential in nature, given by the Quran to the readers.

“Verily in the creation of the heavens and the earth, and the alternation of night and day, there are indeed signs for men of understanding; Men who remember Allah, standing, sitting, and lying down on their sides, and contemplate the creation of the heavens and the earth (with the thought) Our Lord! Not for nothing have you created (all) this. Glory to you! Give us salvation from the suffering of the fire” Qur’an (3: 190-191)

The Ummah as Singularity in Multiplicity

The Ummah is an interconnection of oneness, not segregated tribes who are at war with each other.

We are left to reflect upon the multiplicity of worlds that were created and understand that we are only a tiny part of it.

This opens up wisdom, develops humbleness, and increases empathy towards there being something greater than ourselves. The quintessential and foundational chapter of the Quran, Al Fatihah, or The Opening offer this idea of mercy, peace, gratitude, and wisdom in choosing between Good and Evil. It introduces the reader to the idea that the path of righteousness or the “Siratul Mustaqim” is the path of peace that will guide human beings in this journey through the bountiful and merciful world created by The Lord of the Universe.

This path is a challenging one, as we can see that even the world “Islam” can be used to strike terror in others as well as create untold magnitude of destruction. The emergence of the ISIS “Islamic State of Syria and Iraq” or ISISL, The Islamic State of Iraq and Levant” or the Daesh (Darul Islamiyah) and the globalization of terror has is an example of how the word of Islam and the tawhidic message of peace can be misrepresented and be a guide to the path of “those cursed” as the last verse of the Al Fatihah reads.

This takes us into the “tawhidic-singularity” realm of Islam with the idea of Gnosticism factored into the belief system – of the ‘alam al-ghaib’, the concealed dimension of reality

We are told within the Tawhid to submit to Allah and be part of the greater universe. Yet the behaviour espoused by Islam scholars today tends to deem that OUR humanity is at the centre of the universe. It puts humankind above the natural laws of the universe, in a state of arrogance, detested in the Qu’ran itself.

Today we see many political Islamic ideologies that seek to dominate all.

This is contrary to Allah’s scheme of things within the Qu’ran.

The continual return to referencing Allah as the Merciful and the Compassionate reminds us of the need for humility, not hostility and cruelty to humankind.

Choice is open to humankind within the teachings of the Qu’ran. This implies man can choose the realities he wants to exist within:

I control what I perceive

I control what I think

I control how I act

I am responsible for the consequences.

(13:11)

This must occur beyond the bounds of ego-centric consciousness and the assumption that there is only one possible reality.

The action upon literal translation of the Qu’ran is a denial of the true realities that the Qu’ran lays out in front of us. Literal scholarly understanding of the Quran has shackled our understanding to the cultural metaphors that have bounded Islam to its Arabness that we see today. This has blinded us to seeing the deeper dimensions of Islam and the messages of transformation towards Tawhidness. The Quran is a dynamic book, talking about change. It’s been interpreted as static dogma and doctrines, losing the central message about our journal of transcendence to the state of Tawhidness.

The paradoxes of metaphoric and material universes

The paradoxes of the Qu’ran advise humanity not to be too self-excessive and egocentric. Our greed, and other negative emotions, narcissism and other neurosis, addictions, pleasures, accumulation of wealth, and how we treat others is a quantum introspection that we are taught within the Qu’ran, in order to assist us seeing other realities (universes), that we have choice to enter and exist within.

Only through this open awareness can we experience the realities of the world around us, learn to submit to the greater universe around us, which is called Allah. Our essence of purity through the state of spirituality is the only paradigm we can use to understand the deep meaning of the Tawhid and its greatness, far beyond any person, society, or time.

Thus the Tawhid provides humanity with a meaning of life; that of being part of a greater existence; a worldview that accommodates not only the multiple worldviews of existing belief system but also respects the process of constructing emergent new ones.

The introspection of a literal Allah is a neurosis that blinds us to Allah’s true greatness and our true appreciation of this. This is the true reality.

In Islam, worldviews such as that proposed through Sufism takes Muslims away from the ordered mechanistic world view. The world can be seen for what it is, complex in almost mystical ways, as even the laws of nature itself can be seen beyond cause and effect, beyond karma which is too simplistic to explain reality.

This is the Quantum view of Islam, which can also be found in the way Buddhism views the self, Reality, and existence. Buddhist ideas such as the self as non-existence and constantly evolving as the “being and becoming bodhisattva” journeys towards “nibbbana or Nirvana,” and constantly being aware of the impermanence of the self and the ephemerality of physical beings, and to live a principle of “non-attachment to this mechanistic and material world,”, and finally to view that life is a process of samsara or the evolution towards liberation, perpetual happiness, and next to enter the realm of “being and nothingness” – this view is where the similarity of Quantum Islam and core metaphysical teachings of existing cultural philosophies lie.

Perception and feeling become more important than any form of quantitative measurement in understanding reality. The Qu’ran itself is not a quantitative work. It is a compendium of propositions inviting readers to think of multiple interpretations of the meaning of texts, subtexts, and cultural contexts. It is a postmodern text that has not proper arrangement or a sense of story of creationism. In other words, it is not a structured story about the metaphysics and physics of creation and Man’s place in the universe. The Quran, in short is merely a set of annotated readings inviting the reads to deconstruct meanings. It is a book about representations of alternate realities in which even the “speaker” or “narrator” of this grand text utilizes shifting pronouns in telling stories and passing down decrees.

Reality and Quantum Islam

The perception of reality is about awareness as the Qu’ran teaches. It is about how individuals transcend the universe through a journey towards a destination and seek the final reality.

Mathematics breaks down in any view of reality, i.e., mathematics cannot explain 10% of infinity. Science cannot explain reality; as if we look at an atom we are not sure whether it’s a particle or a wave. There is a duality to everything, i.e., atoms can be in more than one place at the same time. Half of what we look at is in decay, so the “Schrodinger’s cat “is both alive and dead at the same time. There is a duality of consciousness that we must understand. It is both psychic and physical, full of emotion and emotionless, black and white, good and evil, hot and cold, attracting and repelling. Reality is thus an inter-connectiveness of nature and a web of relationships between humanity and spirituality, that makes up a unified whole within us.

The form of our realities is the product of our observation of this. A tawhidic consciousness is therefore so important in our interpretation of reality.

Prof. Anis Bajrektarevic indicates that it: “corresponds with the Buddhist Yogacara assumption that all perceptions do leave traces which make future similar perceptions more probable/plausible – origins of the potentialities within the quantum realm.” Finally, professor concludes: “This is why mankind kept practicing a prayer.”

Seeing this is the order within the chaos that shrouds our minds by focusing too much on the poles of the existential paradoxes. Paradoxes can only be understood through balance. Then one can see the truths within people, relationships, and events.

Many Islamic writers resorted to using poetry to enhance the understanding of non-linear world.

The Qu’ran talks of a transition to a level where the duality of mind and body cannot be distinguished. We shift into a singularity where there is no time, no space, just a transcendence or universal oneness. We transcend the four dimensions that we understand into further dimensions which the Qu’ran speaks of but we have no direct prior experience. This is the state called Syurga.

The direct experience of reality is a psychic and emotional breakthrough to what Islam calls Al-falah.

The only tool needed to see reality is a tawhidic transcending awareness, which is the key to openness and seeing something greater than our selves.

This is why we rely on rituals such as Zikir (where prayer is incorporated) which builds up higher levels of consciousness. Zikir should help us create an empty mind so all thoughts are cleared to enable us to see the greater universe free of our own egocentrism.

This is where insight come from as we experience ‘eureka manifestations’ of both personal and universal nature. Einstein wrote of this epiphanic moment in his journey to construct the “theory of relativity,”

Our intellect is developed through our experience, which gathers knowledge and interprets meaning for us. The heart of all knowledge for a human is experience. For example, we cannot know what it is like to scuba dive, without actually scuba diving. 100 hours in a classroom cannot give you the same knowledge as a few minutes under the water.

Without experiencing the universe we are blind. This blindness can only be overcome through being open and empathetic to the world around us. Blindness to the universe is a human neurosis.

Science, sense, and soul

A quantum view of reality puts an end to materialism. It is within this paradigm Quantum Islam that one need to look at reality in a different light, taking into consideration that life is not entirely founded upon Materialism.

The Tawhid espouses us to transcend materialism. The non-physical element of our life is our existence, not material things, only their images and symbolic meanings within our minds. This triggers our emotions which create Al-fasad realities for humankind, bringing humans to a level of personal destruction through greed, etc.

This also has repercussions in thought and future actions, and can be considered ill-intentions, contrary to what the Qu’ran espouses. This is our mystical jihad of finding our true uncorrupted existence.

The worldly realities mediate and shrivel over our Tawhidic consciousness, which tells us what is right. Going against what is right is sin and our physic destruction.

Tawhidic consciousness is the true universal wisdom, just as quarks within atoms possess energy which has its own consciousness described for example, by physicist such as Freeman Dyson. Like quarks, we have the capacity to make free decisions.

The non-physical, all embracing empathetic and compassionate mind is what we can develop through Tawhidic guidance. This takes us into the realm of Allah and Syurga.

Allah exists within our higher levels of consciousness, as we are told many times within the Qu’ran.

The narratives of the Qu’ran are concerned with both individual and social (universal) consciousness, the yin and yang of our existence.

This has great implications which haven’t been discussed within the Islamic world. Most are restricted to reading from the literal universe of the Qu’ran, and clinging to this unipolar universe.

To see reality, we must discard the concepts of language and images. Structure gives bias and shackles our ‘knowing’.

Higher intellect cannot be obtained through the processes thinking within mechanistic realities. This blinds us to the understanding of the essential nature of the universe. With a literal understanding of the Qu’ran we are in a paradigm lock within a singular universe of nature. Without paradox, we cannot see meaning, as paradox is the only way we can interpret. Paradox is the language above all other languages, the only way we can create benchmarks within our mind, in order to interpret the universe around us.

However, these paradoxes are ruled by personal emotions, of which we both project and introspect with the dualities that define our world. It is within these dualities that we define ‘good’ and ‘evil’, ‘right’ and ‘wrong’, ‘virtuous’ or ‘sinful’.

Islam and particularly the Tawhid is a field of potential. It is a reality beyond our materialistic reality, and our consciousness which is intertwined with our ego-self. The Tawhid can only be entered into, discovered, or become an awareness through humility on the inside and compassion filtering to the outside, without the ego-self bounding us back to our materialistic existence. This dimension is a field of human and universal purity, full of wisdom; al-Falah. Islam is really about how we transcend the lower earthly dimensions of ourselves into the higher dimension of Tawhid-purity.

This is Quantum-Islam; the potential to be, the choice that has been given to all humanity within the Quran.

Conclusion

Exploring idea of Quantum Islam, as the name suggests, requires the mind of the Muslim to engage in the phenomenological and metaphysical experience of conceiving worldviews beyond the mechanistic view of the personal and physical self and move toward a higher plane of quantum physics and metaphysics. In other words, Muslims should raise the level of understanding Islam from mere doctrinal and cultural to philosophical and multi-universal and multi-dimensional. This requires a new understanding of what god is, beyond how this concept of a creator is understood. A Kuhnian shift in Islamic metaphysics and ontological evolution is needed, as how the idea of a Heisenberg Principle of observing Objectivity was conceived. Muslims need to explore the semiotics of believing itself and venture deeper into the meaning constructing the meaning of reading their “book of readings”: The Quran.

Originally published in the Eurasia Review 12th January 2016

Dr. Azly Rahman is an educator, academic, international columnist, and author of eight books, namely: Multiethnic Malaysia: Past, Present, Future (2009), Thesis on Cyberjaya: Hegemony and Utopianism in a Southeast Asian State (2012), The Allah Controversy and Other Essays on Malaysian Hypermodernity (2013), Dark Spring: Essays on the Ideological Roots of Malaysia’s General Elections-13 (2013), Kalimah Allah Milik Siapa?: Renungan dan Nukilan Tentang Malaysia di Era Pancaroba (2014), Controlled Chaos: Essays on Mahathirism, Multimedia Super Corridor and Malaysia’s ‘New Politics’ (2014), One Malaysia under God, Bipolar (2015), and From High Hopes to Shattered Dreams: Second Mahathirist Revolution (2020).

Dr Azly Rahman’s Substack can be accessed here

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The existence or non-existence of God has become an exercise in semantics. On one side we have the theologians espousing “God” as the designer/creator of the universe and on the other side people like Richard Dawkins who claim that “God” is a delusional belief of humankind[1]. Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow claim a “God” was not necessary in the creation of the universe[2]. Dawkins et. al. have been arguing over premodal concepts of God in the paradigm we know without venturing into working on the creation of new archetypes, which could have widened our narrow perspectives.

Thinking as a species is limited by the paradigms we currently understand. Over the ages each culture interpreted God in their way, and all religions emerged as different doors to the same room – metaphorically speaking of course. The concept of God is apparent in all major cultures and is how civilizations made sense of incomprehensible phenomenon[3].

Over the centuries humanity has worshipped the earth, heavens, and utilized projection, introjection, idealization, sublimation, and denial to deal with fear and hate, and as a way to explain what cannot be comprehended. The belief in God has also played a major role in shaping society’s collective identity[4]. Many people believe in God in the hope of some form of immortality[5].

To a great extent religious rituals have become the meaning, rather than being symbolic of meaning. The power of the esoteric is that it stirs up the irrationality in ourselves. Organized religion has not appeared to deepen our belief in God and adherence to ethics. The concept of God has been hijacked and wrapped up within religion as a means of oppression by those who want to divide and rule society. It has increased our tribal biases, made us judgmental of others, and been the basis of the persecution of many.

Thinking about God and creation may be something like a fish looking outside of a curved fishbowl and trying to make sense of things. Being “inside the reality” we exist within makes it difficult to appreciate new meaning from the single perspective we have from our position of residence within the cosmos. The problem in understanding God is that we think within our social frames, which limit our understanding. Perhaps we have been asking the wrong question; what is God? Maybe a better question would be; how is God?

From the author’s point of view, one must try to avoid in taking on the esoteric as fact or believing in anything based on culture or tradition as knowledge unless it can be proved now or at a later time. For the author, this is the essence of the search for meaning. Therefore the subsequent comments in this essay should be seen a view in thought development as what a potential reality of how God could be among a vista of realities.

Consequently, It is not a fixed view, but thinking in progress, which will become outdated as new knowledge emerges. What I have to say is mere possibility rather than fact.

Perhaps the greatest mystery is understanding the medium or environment we exist within. We are really not much different than a fish in a fishbowl. How we see the environment around us influences what we believe. This is true both socially and scientifically. As we adopt new frames or paradigms our views of the environment change.

For example, we once treated some types of psychosis with lobotomies, now we can treat those same disorders through drugs and therapy. Once we saw the universe revolving around the earth, then the earth and planets revolving around the sun in a synchronized Newtonian order, and now we see the solar system as a dynamic environment. The truth changes as we acquire more knowledge. This has occurred in all domains, fields and disciplines, except for the theology of God.

Present monotheistic religions take an ego-centric view of humanity. The human species is at the centre of the environment if we take the scriptures literally. This places the earth at the centre of the universe and humanity as its master, blocking our ability to view the environment for what is. Many have been persecuted for thinking differently to accepted socially constructed explanations of the unknown.

Many theories exist about the grand order of things, from cosmic consciousness to the evolving hypotheses of quantum mechanics. Cosmic consciousness, M-theory, and the multiverse still have esoteric appearances and connotations. However, we only need to look at the environment to see a structure created out of relatedness[6] with an almost infinite number of phenomena occurring simultaneously in the personal, social, physical, and galactic domains; in what could be postulated a grand self organizing system.

This grand order from the smallest particle to the cosmos itself can be linked through one heuristic that can be found within the ancient Pali texts. This heuristic known as paticcasamuppāda or dependent origination can be summed up in four simple phrases that explain all phenomena and reality;

When there is this, that is

With the arising of this, that arises

When this is not, neither is that

With the cessation of this, that ceases[7]

The general principle of dependent origination concerns the fundamental structure of nature and how the elements within it interrelate. The doctrine of dependent origination looks upon the universe as a continuous succession of action, reaction, and effect within a state of dynamic flux and transformation. Max Brown postulated that the occurrence of entity “A” relies upon the occurrence of entity “B”, i.e., “B” is the cause of “A”.

This implies antecedence where causes must precede or at least simultaneously exist for something else to exist. These phenomena must be spatially connected by a chain of immediate things in conduit[8]. However this is abandoned by dependent origination where mutual arising with entities co-depending upon each other for existence. Dependent origination is not a sequential linear process; it is a cycle with no beginning and no end.

Charles Darwin in the last paragraph of The Origin of Species wrote;

“It is interesting to contemplate a tangled bank, clothed with many plants of many kinds, with birds singing on the bushes, with various insects flitting about, and with worms crawling through the damp earth, and to reflect that these elaborately constructed forms, so different from each other, and dependent upon each other in so complex a manner, have all been produced by laws acting around us[9]”.

This gives us a perspective of his sense of wonderment about the complexity[10] and interrelationships within the biological system of life and evolution that the concept of dependent origination postulates. Thus only through interrelatedness can we see meaning;

Paper without a tree

A tree without soil

Soil without water

Water without clouds

Clouds without an atmosphere

An atmosphere without oceans.

This according to Winnicott is also relevant to human relationships, the family and the outside world[11];

A child and a parent

A parent and a partner

Partners and family

Family and friends

Friends and humanity

Humanity and nature.

Everything in the realms of nature and humanity are dependent upon each other for existence. Things only exist through relatedness[12]. We can only exist through relatedness. Nothing can exist in isolation as it all depends upon numerous determinants which are all interrelated. If one doesn’t exist then the rest can’t exist. This continually changes, therefore entities change must change to adapt.

This can be clearly demonstrated with a plant where the plant relies upon the soil as a medium, minerals and nutrients to grow, moisture as carrier for the nutrients and a building block for cellular structures and the sun to enable photosynthesis for the building to occur.

Without any of these, the plant cannot exist. The determinants that enable a plant to grow do not influence the plant in any sequential order of time. They must exist together, interdependent of each other. The plant contributes to maintaining the system through the shedding of leaves and other foliage, which decays, adding to the humus and trace minerals in the soil.

In theory for anything to exist in isolation, it must be self-sustaining and stable. However within the laws of nature that is impossible, thus as a consequence everything is only transient with no intrinsic properties of its own. All entities are created and sustained through interrelationship. There is no beginning or end as the question of what came first cannot be answered: “the seed or the plant, or the chicken or the egg?”

Figure 1. The dependence of a plant upon the whole environment to survive[13].

There is no such thing as chance. Every event is a result of the consequences of previous events, cumulating as multiple influences upon what is. Therefore the notion of chance depends upon preconditions. As nothing exists in isolation, everything depends upon pre-determinants that are not sequential or required to arise in any particular order.

This is in great contrast to the classical paradigm where the universe was deemed to be predictable like billiard balls rolling upon a table. Quantum behavior is also attuned to human behavior which is much less predictable and impossible to measure through mathematics; where only probability can be predicted through heuristics.

Dependent origination as a universal heuristic would look something like figure 2. The lines represent and interplay of two causal factors, one linear and the other synchronic that contribute to a non-linear pattern. Lines (2) and (4) are linear and connect past events overtime to the present and ground the future. Lines (1) and (3) are synchronic and connect objects and events to the present moment.

These two basic principles intersect representing that all events are influenced by the two sets of conditions. Structurally this divides a system into parts, connecting the past, present and future together. The past and present circumstances determine the present which creates consequences for the future. However don’t confuse time itself as a determinant, as time is itself a ‘manmade’ invention[14]. Time itself does not directly influence events, only what happens within the framework of time.

Figure 2. The dependent origination or “God” heuristic?

Every event takes place in a context determined by the combined influence of past events and present circumstances. Every event has repercussions in the present with reverberations extending into the future. The strength of the influence will depend upon the intensity of the event. Sometimes events reverberate and amplify an effect and sometimes events may suppress an event[15].

However this is not the result of a chain of causes leading to effects strung over time. Any event may be affected by a past event and present circumstances which may lead to unexpected feedback loops during the causal process[16].

Due to this possibility of any event happening at any time, the causation or arising process is extremely fluid and complex[17]. The Pali explains the phenomena using the metaphor of water rather than the wheel of samsara, thus metaphors such as ebb and flow are much more suitable than “sequencity”.

If everything existed in linear relationships, everything would be totally predictable and deterministic and the future would be unable to change from the present and past. If everything was totally in synchronic relationships there would be no relationships from on period to another and all events would be totally random and completely unpredictable.

Everything would just break down and change without reason and connection. The two modes work in concurrence where past events and present circumstances create a potential, but not completely determined path.

Critical to the continuality of the processes of dependent origination is feedback. Feedback is one of the energies (along with momentum) that enable the system to operate continuously as a self organizing system. To understand how particular feedback occurs is to understand the manifestations of dependent origination. It is this feedback which defines interdependency. However this understanding may be beyond our cognitive abilities and is thus one of the challenges for mankind to overcome in the future[18].

Closed feedback loops are responsible for linearity of the system and open feedback loops are responsible for non-linearity of the system. Closed feedback loops influence quantitative rates within a system, such as a thermostat regulating temperature in a room. Open feedback systems are more dynamic and allow for changes in the state of a system, like the change in direction of wind within a weather system that brings a change in the state of weather.

Simple closed loop feedback systems can be responsible for counterintuitive behavior[19]. For example, we usually over correct heater thermostat systems which lead to oscillations in room temperature until we find a stable range.

This is very similar in a free market pricing mechanism in economics where an increase in price leads to the entry of new producers until supply outstrips demand and the price decreases to a level where producers leave the industry, leading to supply shortages and increases in prices once again, in a continuous cycle.

Open systems tend to operate with multi-loop non-linear feedback systems where many variables provide for unpredictable results. It is the interaction of counter-reactive feedback loops that provide the unpredictability and chaos within the system. These feedback systems can also exist across the sub-systems of the environment where certain phenomena can exert enormous influence upon much more powerful phenomena in other sub-systems.

This can clearly be seen in the current European financial crisis where public perception and sentiment has dramatic affects upon the stability/instability of the Euro and even fabric of the European financial system, i.e., where collective thinking can become self fulfilling prophecies.

Not through the esoteric will of any collective unconscious but by the forces of behavioural economics. Mathematical formulas are centered on linearity and cannot predict the outcome of a system that is both emergent and self organizing. As the number of feedback loops increase the complexity of the system increases exponentially[20].

If one traces back the stream of events, no root causes can be found for anything. Events are an emergence, a natural evolution where there is a mutually arising[21]. Open systems are just too complex to determine any single cause, and selecting single causes to explain phenomena would just delude reality. Consequently there is no beginning and end, just a continuous flow of events.

The doctrine of dependent origination applies to all things and subsequently all things are influenced by cause and effect. Kammaniyama the law of karma determines potential future behavior paths in a similar manner to how Foucault saw social interaction as ”….a set of actions upon other actions”[22]. All events and phenomena produce karma.

Karma is the ‘potential’ generated by ‘cause and effect’ or the interrelationships between dynamic entities[23]. Karma can have a positive or negative consequence upon the future. Karma being a ‘potential’[24] is what keeps the universe transient across time dimensions. To some degree karma actually provides the substance to time, as without karma there would be no change in the universe and thus no time[25].

Karma is regularly mistaken for something psychic that acts upon the soul, more attuned to the romantic narrative of a humanized religious version of Buddhism[26], or the mythology of reincarnation based on past deeds done upon the Earth. Other misinterpretations describe karma as a form of fate.

This heuristic can be applied to the cognitive, social, physical, and cosmos. It is the basis of all force or energy, the very medium we exist within.

The interdependence of existence is the fabric of all realities. It links the present with what has gone on before, explaining mutual dependence. This is much more complex than simple cause and effect relationships. For example, we saw that a plant needs soil, and within the soil, moisture to carry trace elements and nutrients to the root system that operates from enzymes and proteins formed through photosynthesis in a harmony of nature.

There is no cause and effect, just mutual dependence. This heuristic explains Darwin’s reefs, Lovelock’s Gaia, the formation and existence of the solar system, quantum mechanics, society, and our self identity, intention, and behaviour. The fabric of quantum reality can be seen as the “God particle” or Higgs Boson, culture in the social domain that both knits and divides society, and imagination that enables humans to think, feel, create, and maintain a self identity.

These are the seas upon which everything exists according to the nature of dependent origination, operating as a self organizing system.

The wisdom of the cosmos is contained within the above heuristic. Such a paradigm escapes esotericism, transcends theology and poses that the entire cosmos is the actual fabric of our reality. It is complex, but it is grounded, therefore a wisdom that one can obtain, the ultimate understanding about the great mystery – the creator. Creation does not occur through intended intelligent design, but rather by inter-dependence and co-arising – an emergence.

Humanity did not arise by design, but by chance. Thus we have been unable to see God; because we have been within God. To understand how is to understand God. This heuristic as a metaphor implies that God is everything and everything is God.

This paradigm or potential reality of God would have a number of potential consequences:

Firstly, as time is an artificial creation of humankind, there cannot be a beginning or end, only arising or cessation. Therefore there may have not been a big bang and the multiverse theory may have validity making the concept of existence something far beyond what our imagination could ever comprehend. This also has implications for the earth and humankind, our existence is not permanent. As we exist within a self organizing system, change and evolution is inevitable.

There is no such thing as immortality. Where we go after death is part of the great sustainability, we are recycled and exist as something else. Both metaphorically and physically we are children of the earth and the stars.

Secondly, ethics are about survival. Life follows the physical laws like everything else. Nothing is divine, just the result of heuristic probabilities – a good reason to be humble. Ethics have always been related to social order and have been culturally bounded. Society and religion have been the external medium of transference and perpetuation.

Under the doctrine of dependent origination ethics or universal values exist within our true self, hidden by layer upon layer of constructed false identities, greatly influenced by the emotions we carry both instinctively and through our imagination[27].

Therefore non-ethical behaviour can be seen as ignorance. All evil in the world is thus a human and social construction. One of the great tragedies of today is that organized religion sees evil as a product of “satan” and absolves man for the evil he does through particular set rituals. Religion for numerous reasons has failed to provide humanity practical codes of ethics and morals to live by.

Our ethics are driven by the notion of our existence. In addition to survival, ethics are needed to control the notion of ourselves, so one can live in social codependence. This realization would be the catalyst of a society built upon compassion, fairness, and equity.

Under dependent origination, the concept of cause and effect (or karma as it may be more commonly known) constitutes existence. It creates our notion of existence; our self views. Without karma we don’t exist as a person – we are intellectually and emotionally a product of society and out experiences within it. What we think and feel shapes the present and influences future actions.

All structure (self identity, social, physical, etc) is the consequences of prior actions sustained through past and present practices and experienced as obdurate[28].

As such karma is itself a potential process of transformation, an opportunity to change[29]. The opportunity to change is the key principle behind sustainability – not necessarily developing static practices that we believe are sustainable. A completely new paradigm about how we think of sustainability is required drawing upon the lessons of co-arising and cessation in Darwin’s reef, Lovelock’s Gaia, and Hawking’s multiverse.

Our imagination is grounded upon what we already know and this can only expand through further discovery and experience, but is limited by the metaphors we use. God certainly exists, within our imagination, where all reality exists.

As our knowledge increases, so will our understanding of the concepts of God. Faith is fine, but not the faith of the premodal order that locks one into a narrow and unchanging view. Faith is often needed to pursue ideas and test validity – one of the prerequisites of man’s ability to be creative and adapt; the real essence of sustainability.

Understanding is a dynamic construct according to dependent origination. Perhaps this essay should conclude with some words attributed to Albert Einstein. “The religion of the future will be a cosmic religion. It should transcend a personal God and avoid dogmas and theology. Covering both the natural and the spiritual, it should be based on a religious sense arising from the experience of all things, natural and spiritual, as a meaningful unity.” Dependent origination may answer his description.

Prof. Murray Hunter

Endnotes

[1] Dawkins, R., (2006), The God Delusion, London, Black Swan.

[2] Hawking, S., & Mlodinow, L., (2010), The Grand design: New answers to the ultimate questions in life, London, Bantam Press.

[3] Private communication with Arman Nobari, Sacramento, California.

[4] Cohen postulated that objects are central to a society’s collective identity, a role that God and religion has played throughout every society. Any object such as religion according to Blumer consists of meaning for a person and society for whom it is an object. Cohen, J., (1993), The conflicting views of symbolic interactionalists and Talcott Parsons concerns the nature of relations between persons and non-human objects: A sequel to “About steaks liking to be eaten”, Studies in Symbolic Interaction, Vol. 14, pp. 127-153, Blumer, H., (1969), Symbolic Interactionism: Perspective and Method, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, Prentice Hall, P. 11.

[5] Becker, E. (1973). The Denial of Death, New York, Free Press.

[6] We derive meaning through comparison, thus meaning is a relative phenomenon.

[7] Pali Tipitika S.II.28,65

[8] Brown, M., (1949), Natural Philosophy of Cause and Chance, New York, Dover Publishers.

[9] Darwin, C. (1859). The Origin of Species by means of natural selection on the preservation of favoured species in the struggle for life, London, John Murray.

[10] Even the concept of complexity is relative to the number and nature of actions we are comparing our perceptions with.

[11] Winnicott, D., W., (1967), The Child, the family and the Outside World, Reading, MA, Addison-Wesley.

[12] Even the conditions around our body are experienced through relatedness. For example, if you have been working outside on a hot day and go inside to an air conditioned room, upon returning outside the heat will feel unbearable. Initially the feeling was neutral, but only when one experiences comfortable conditions will the hot conditions outside become a conscious burden. In Buddhism this is important to the concept of suffering or dukkha. Relatedness and comparison as the basis of emotions like greed and envy.

[13] Taken from Hunter, M. (2009), Essential Oils: Art, Science, Agriculture, Industry & Entrepreneurship: A focus on the Asia-pacific region, New York, Nova Scientific Publishers, P. 355.

[14] Feynman, R., (1995), Six Easy Pieces, London, Penguin Books, P. 110.

[15] A good example of amplification and suppression might be a company’s sales. For example certain factors like population growth, rising per capita incomes, advertising, word of mouth, and more accessible channels to reach the public may amplify a firm’s sales growth. However, a situation of decreasing population, loss of spending power though unemployment, increasing competition, and/or the arrival of new technologies may suppress the growth of sales.

[16] DeGraff, G., Thanissaro Bhikkhu, (1996), ‘The Wings of Awakening’, P.300.

[17] DeGraff, G., Thanissaro Bhikkhu, (1996), ‘The Wings of Awakening’, P.301.

[18] Gharajedaghi, J., (2006), Systems Thinking: Managing Chaos and Complexity: A platform for designing business architecture, Amsterdam, Elservier, P. 119.

[19] Forrester, J., W., (1971), Counter intuitive behavior of social systems, Technology Review, Vol. 73, No. 3, pp. 52-68.

[20] Wolfram, S., (2002), New Kind of Science, Wolfram Media, Inc., online at: http://www.wolframscience.com/

[21] The belief that in the beginning there was nothing, does not have any foundation in dependent origination. This thinking can be seen as an attachment to concepts as the truth is unknown, and implies the existence of a creator. This view of the world means that humankind cannot seek solutions by wishing or praying to ‘the gods’. There is no such thing as luck, there are no aimless accidents as there is a seemingly endless process of evolution going on.

[22] Foucault, M., (1973), The order of things: An archeology of the human sciences, New York, Vintage/Random House, P. 220.

[23] The Buddha taught the concept of karma in the pretext of human suffering, where emotions like greed, envy, anger, and other psychotic emotions perpetuate one within one of the realms of samsara. See Hunter, M. (2012), Opportunity, Strategy & Entrepreneurship: A meta-Theory, Volume 1, New York, Nova Scientific Publishers, pp. 255-266.

[24] Something like the current potential between the positive and negative nodes of direct current electricity. It takes a wire of something that can conduct electricity to realize the potential connecting the two terminals.

[25] Time is a relative measure of one point against another.

[26] Payne, R., (2006), Individual and Awakening: Romantic narrative and the Psychological Interpretation of Buddhism and Psychotherapy, In: Unno, M. (Ed.), Buddhism and Psychotherapy Across Cultures: Essays on Theories and Practices, Boston, Wisdom Books, P. 36.

[27] Hunter, M., (2011), Perpetual self conflict: Self awareness as a key to our ethical drive, personal mastery, and perception of entrepreneurial opportunities, Contemporary Readings in law and Social Justice, Vol. 3, No. 2, pp. 96-137.

[28] , Blumer, H., (1969),” Symbolic Interactionism”, Strauss, A., L., (1993), Continual Presentations of Action, New York, Aldine de Gruyter.

[29] However structure is usually very slow to evolve which hints at humankind’s inability to learn from history.

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In the rapidly urbanizing ASEAN region today upward career mobility requires a diploma, degree, and some form of post graduate qualifications to get promotions, particularly within the desirable publicly listed companies in the region.

Upon closer scrutiny of what is taught at these “B” schools, a colonial hangover and psychological dependence on ‘Western’ ideas appears to still linger on. This is somewhat ironic in a region where most South-east Asian governments espouse their own national values and “ways of doing things”.

South-East Asian countries may stand independent politically, gone a long way in achieving economic independence, but today still trapped within the syndrome of intellectual colonization. As business schools steadfastly stick to occidental business curriculum, former “western colonial masters” still dominate their ex-colonies, this time intellectually.

Business, entrepreneurship, and management courses are the fastest growing areas in South-East Asian education. Along with ICT, these are the most popular areas within both the private and public higher education sectors. The relatively low overhead and operational cost per cohort is a financial windfall for colleges and universities. Business education has become the cash-cow of colleges and universities within the region.

What makes these courses financially lucrative is the relatively low cost of teaching resources for basic courses compared to other disciplines. Very little infrastructure aside from classrooms and lecture theatres are required.

A great number of business schools develop curriculum around an array of “international” edition US sourced textbooks on offer by the major educational publishers, strongly competing for business.

Consequently the intelligentsia of many business schools has looked inwardly, focusing their concerns upon quantity and numbers. They are bureaucratic diploma factories based upon single textbook unit courses, orientated around exams that at best measure memory and retention rather than creativity and the potential of the student to be innovative.

To cap it all off, these schools are burdened down with quality assurance processes at administrative and teaching levels. With the high time commitment needed to adhere to these processes, mediocrity is ensured through the rigidity these systems create.

The leaders and teaching staff of the region’s business schools have a preference for the imported hype of management gurus who are popular in the media, even if these positivist instruments are not directly suited to the different contexts and varied business situations within the local environment.

Perhaps it would not be exaggerated in saying that local academics educated in the “western” paradigm locally or abroad are mesmerized by international management gurus.

The great paradox of South-East Asian business and entrepreneurship education is that local higher education institutions espouse values within their respective cultural frameworks, but what is actually taught is distinctly “western”.

There has been little debate about the fit between “western” management thinking and the make-up and behavior of local corporations, entrepreneurs, and the general environment. As a consequence, the relevance of many theories has been accepted without question.

For example in the theory area, Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs is accepted into management curriculum where there may be many other more suitable theories and meta-theories that could be advanced. In the contextual area, the legal system, supply chain, where the emphasis on particular marketing tools should lie, interrelationships between people, which all could be described ‘as the way of doing things’, makes applying ‘western management theory’ challenging to say the least.

The preference for the ‘latest popular’ management knowledge often leads to misinterpretations, as very few management and entrepreneur instructors actually have much first hand business experience.

Thus rigid interpretations of management still influence entrepreneurship courses. Many entrepreneurship courses advocate market research through focus groups, which are not suited to new to the world products in developing markets. Business plans are almost always at the central core of any curriculum where there is little evidence that planning leads to success in entrepreneurship.

Further business schools base much of the curriculum upon general misconceptions that both the media and imported textbooks that have evolved over the last 15 to 20 years have created.

Entrepreneurship has been glorified by media stories, biographies of successful entrepreneurs, and events like ‘entrepreneurship week’, ‘business plan competitions’, and ‘entrepreneurship awards’. Course curriculum is shaped in the mold of the media made myths of hi-tech and high-growth entrepreneurs.

Business literature in South-East Asia is primarily US based which reflects the needs of a post industrial society rather than a developing economy. This is partly responsible for one of the biggest tragedies of entrepreneurship education in the region. Very little if any focus is given to various technologies that a potential entrepreneur will require in a new business.

The acquisition of technology is one of the greatest difficulties SMEs in developing countries face and little is done within the education sphere to solve this problem. A graduating student may have acquired some general business skills but has little or no knowledge or access to the means to acquire the knowledge to develop a farm, a small engineering shop, a food manufacturing operation, or a cosmetic manufacturing operation.

One can see around the ASEAN region that it is the non-business schools that show innovation with their outreach programs while business schools fall into the trap of cashing in on their BBA, MBA, and now DBA programs.

Evolving South-East Asian business and entrepreneurship curriculum has followed the post industrial models with a number of errors and mistakes. Due to the developing nature of most South-East Asian economies, there should be an emphasis on manufacturing which should include new product development and manufacturing line and system development.

However ‘cut and paste’ curriculum from business schools in post industrial societies have largely dropped manufacturing from their curriculum due to the cohort interest in the services sector, where opportunities exist. This leads to a mismatch of what South-East Asian business schools offer and what business and entrepreneurship students need.

As a result business and entrepreneurship graduates flood out into the market place without any technology skills, crowding the services sector which is not creating extra employment or real economic growth. Business and entrepreneurship graduate employability is a major issue facing South-East Asian economies today, with thousands of unemployed business graduates all across the region.

These two issues, technology and pedagogy require some deep thinking on the part of the intelligentsia of South-East Asian business schools. Content and delivery needs to be closely examined, experimented with, and utilized with close adaptation to the needs of South-East Asian cohorts. This is the challenge that requires a large investment in time and staff resources to create the curriculum and delivery methods necessary to meet the needs of the students and nation.

To compound the problem further, governments and local corporations have a preference for foreign advisors and consultants, shunning their own. There is a negative disposition toward ‘locals’. Foreign advisors and consultants are most often sort in the misconception that their advice will be superior to local advisors and consultants, even though foreigners may have little real understanding of local context.

This doesn’t occur because of any vacuum in knowledge and wisdom of local academics. In fact many South-East Asian academics are very successful in other universities around the world. Some have written very sound academic dissertations and hypothesis but fail to get them published through the publishers that can bring them to mass popularity. Rather they sell a few hundred copies and can be found gathering dust on library shelves.

Part of this preference for foreign expertise is based on the belief that something imported is better, an old colonial hangover. However the cost of this hangover is holding back indigenous intellectual development and preserving the state of neo-colonialism at a time when the US and Europe are far from possessing a monopoly of new ideas.

The irony is that Asian ideas have more influence on ‘Western’ management thought than in Asian management thinking. The only probable exception is Confucianism which could cautiously be associated with the structure, process, and strategies of family owned Chinese businesses in Southeast Asia.

Although Sun Tzu’s ‘The Art of War’ and Buddhist Dharma originated in the Asian region, it has primarily been ‘Western’ management thinkers who have applied the respective philosophies to management, at least in these contemporary times. Although the Islamic ‘Tawhid’ is 1500 years old, it is probably only now that it is being considered seriously as a management philosophy.

Business school deans tend to play the role of a patriarch rather than a chairman of the board, which often degrades into crude authoritarianism. Consequently major positions within the hierarchy tend to go to those are liked and favored, rather than those who have worked meritoriously, successfully, and are qualified for the job.

Consequently many business schools in South-East Asia see personal power as the prize and Machiavellian behavior as the norm. Motivation among staff at the school will most probably be very low.

There is a drastic shortage of business and entrepreneurship lecturers within the region. Stringent criteria in the employment of lecturers eliminate the potential to employ mature, experienced practitioners or practademics.

For example under the regulations of one aspiring university in Malaysia that portrays itself as the “Harvard of the East”, it would not be possible to employ people like Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, and the late Steve Jobs, even as adjunct, due to issues of qualifications. Thus those that gain employment within the region’s colleges and universities have formal qualifications, usually without much, if any experience.

South-East Asian business and entrepreneurship academics consequently tend to lack the depth of knowledge about what they teach and rely on textbooks and popular management books as the basis of their teaching. This lack of depth of knowledge in many fields leads to a lack of confidence to develop curriculum outside the familiar textbooks they have available to them, thus inhibiting the ability to provide an education according to local needs.

With this comes a reinforcement of an unconscious bias towards ‘western’ literature as local literature is still rare and far between and in many cases just a translation of existing foreign textbooks. Any original local material usually lacks peer acceptance due to the lack of ability of many to critically appraise it.

South-East Asian business schools have developed into a rut of pursuing quantity for the windfall incomes they can accumulate through popular products like the MBA.

Foreign universities through setting up branches or strategic alliances are also cashing in on the rapid growth of business education in South-East Asia, further perpetuating the myth that foreign business theories are the first class product. They have adopted the classic post colonial market strategy of importing their product into a local market with minimum modification and exploiting the market to the maximum.

This rut manifests deep into the structure and processes of local colleges and universities. ISO quality accreditations and their logos are prominently displayed as symbols of quality, even though they have little or no relevance to the actual standard of the courses provided. ISO standards make no claims about product quality or relevance whatsoever and only mislead the public. The resources needed to implement these useless ISO standards are taken from potential academic development resources. This leaves a single textbook approach to courses, predominately delivered through formal lectures, rigid assessment and examination criteria and reliance on outdated curriculum development tools like Bloom’s taxonomy, when there have been many advances in pedagogy over the last few years; all in an unquestioning manner. The result of this is a sanitized teaching paradigm which doesn’t reflect the real business environment, leaving students ill-prepared for the outside world.

This ‘cut and paste’ culture without questioning and adaptation is holding back the development of business education in the region.

Of late, universities have realized the need for research to build esteem and gain a ranking. However this has been turned into a meaningless chase of KPI figures. Many new academic journals are cashing in on this unhealthy focus on SCOPUS indexing and now offer ‘pay for publishing’ arrangements, rather than the traditional ‘double blind peer review’ system.

To date, most local research has tended to emulate other research, applying theory to local contexts, rather than developing indigenous hypotheses. This lack of originality is preventing the rise in international stature of local business academics and is the loss of a great opportunity to develop Asian based management knowledge.

Local South-East Asian academics have not asked whether “there is a distinctively Asian type of management based upon traditional philosophy?” Management theory has been something secular in Asia in contrast with the ‘west’ where it has been tainted with spiritualism. Asian academics have preferred to keep both issues in separate boxes. May be it is just from lack of confidence to think outside their trained discipline and merge new ideas into their existing knowledge.

The education gap between South-East Asia, Europe, Australia, and the US is going to be felt for a long time. Part of the problem is the inept ability and resistance to change. Part of the problem is the lack of skilled, experienced and knowledgeable people. However the rigidity of educational institutions is something that can be solved, through some visionary thinking.

There is also another problem. It is apparent that creativity is an important aspect of education, which is deeply lacking in Asian curriculum throughout the whole school system within most of the ASEAN region.

In business and entrepreneurship creativity is vital in the areas of opportunity recognition and construction, strategy development and execution, marketing, new product development, and solving general problems related to entrepreneurship. Creativity, rather than intelligence appears to be a more critical factor in achieving success.

It could be argued that ASEAN’s failure to develop their own contextually relevant theories and the corresponding positivist practices, where instead culturally unsuited practices are utilized, is a missed opportunity to develop new forms of new dynamic capabilities and competitive advantage within the region. This is the challenge to management academics and practitioners in ASEAN.

It is the task of looking through the rich history, culture, society, stories, and philosophies of the region for the inspiration to develop and construct homegrown management ideas, rather than importing ideas developed in other parts of the world, which are suitable for those parts of the world.

Confucian, Buddhist, Strategy, and Islamic institutes exist all over the region, but there has been little focus on developing these philosophies as management paradigms. Today there is an intense vacuum of original management thinkers in the ASEAN region.

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It is our perception and the meaning we construct to what we see that defines the environment we exist within. Without our perception, the environment has no definition and no meaning; the meaning originates from our social relatedness and consciousness.

We project our own versions of reality onto the environment and make interpretations through introspection, and this is what defines the nature of the environment.

Even the simplest environments are complex, something we usually don’t consider, having multiple meanings for us to interpret and understand. When it comes to our reality, our self and environment cannot exist without the other. Our individual perspectives can only be the partial truth.

Currently there is an increasing consensus and mutual understanding between quantum mechanics and theology, particularly Eastern theology. Each stream of thinking is coming to some accommodation with the other, although this is not abetted by grave criticism from some quarters.

Nonetheless the meaning of our very existence and self identity, awareness, and consciousness has become a very popular subject, not from the 19^th Century philosophical perspectives, but from the spiritual viewpoint, free of institutional religion.

A crisis of faith and rapid political and socio-economic structural transformations are taking place which is leaving the classical ethical philosophies to the history books, as if they are deemed not relevant to today’s post industrial societies.

Obedience to traditional authorities and institutions have waned in favour of geographical and social mobility where urbanization, new emerging technologies, media and peer opinion. Membership and identity is anchored to different symbols, values, and institutions than was the case twenty, thirty, and fifty years ago.

In a similar manner to cognitive science, quantum mechanics is on the verge of new understanding of the universe, totally changing the way we understand it.

The Newtonian paradigm of a set order, place, and independent existence, where objects are tangible, definable, solid, existing, and where interaction with other objects was of secondary importance has influenced our comprehension of conceptual reality. Independent reality prevailed.

However within the quantum world objects exist in a relational manner to each other in a phenomenal reality, far from being the static entities that Newtonian physics envisaged. This relational manner infers interdependence for existence, rather than independence.

These relational concepts are difficult to comprehend within industrialized occidental society, where orientations have been towards independence rather than interdependence, probably a paradigm that blocked physicists’ awareness of quantum interdependencies for many years.

When relational principles are applied to the humans, we see the inter-connectiveness of our body where all organs are somehow linked and must work together to create continuous interactive processes or else we will not exist as a person.

Humanity itself lives within an interconnected Earth that is able to seek self-balance, as if it were a living entity. Humankind, the Earth, and the universe are interconnected and only exist through our perception. Our realties are culturally defined which connects us as a society.

According to Daniel Goleman our brain has developed where our interrelationships develop a brain to brain link up, primarily through the communication of emotions. Even our thinking and reasoning depends upon socially manifested language for meaning. We are not independent of anything.

This complexity is contrary to how the brain tries to order things, as our cognitive architecture is limited. The French philosopher Pierre Teilhard de Chardin’s postulation that we are not human beings having a spiritual existence; we are spiritual beings having a human existence brings us into the metaphysical esoteric, which cannot be avoided in such subject material.

What we must ask here is whether we are really getting closer to understanding the concept of our true self reality, or are we just creating another paradigm to explain our identity in a different way.

What is important to this argument is what is our “true nature” and how does our “true nature” link to ethics and sustainability? Is this a socio-cultural link?

Or is this a link of universal nature? In other words are there inner assumptions and values inherent within us or are they completely socialized? How are they relevant to the phenomenology of our thinking, opportunity, action, strategy, and the universe of objects within our environment?

We must identify the phenomenon that blocks us from seeing our true self, so we can understand the interrelationships between self, ethics, sustainability, and opportunity and strategy.

What gives us our ethical outlook? Are our ethical bondages associated in any way with our true nature? How have they been covered up by our society, civic and religious values? And, if so, how do we handle them? Are we just encoded biological robots, or is there something much more substantive in us?

What gives us our views about sustainability? Why do we believe in the human mythology about our immortality, superiority of the human species, and our ability to dominate nature?

Is the realization of our “true nature” going to change anything? Is our awareness important to survival as we know it? Why do we create defence mechanisms to deny these realities? Why do we continue to deny these realities that conflict with the myths we live by?

The development of our cerebral cortex gave rise to our higher levels of consciousness. This gave humankind many new brain functions with the capacity for both social and environmental interaction. We became thinking mammals that could take account of both the self and the environment in our actions. This brings back the question of who are we?

The concepts of “I” and “me” is a constructed identity and all of our behaviour is construed within this identity. This is the false self that we live within which performs the role of a macro-defence guarding mechanism maintaining our survival, and suppressing the innate qualities of our true self.

However this comes at great cost. The identity that we create to protect ourselves becomes our identity, and we don’t even know it.

When we can escape the influence of our emotions, and this requires a massive effort focusing our attention, we begin through our innate empathy to develop an understanding of our self, others, and the environment.

The intensity of “I” and “me” sublimes into the background with our emotions. The boundaries become blurred and we start coming in touch with part of our self that we are not normally aware of.

For example, a ‘macho’ male may find doors to his feminine side, a hardnosed accountant may develop compassion for others in need that he or she previously didn’t realize were in need, and a person may come to the realization that they are hurting people with their behaviour.

These are all insights into other realities that we don’t normally see. Eventually under all of our emotions we find a simple state of humility, awe at life around us, and a feeling of joy.

This is where we can see connections like never before. We see the world as a connected entity, connected by stories, interactions, proximity, phenomena, and being.

When we buy a pair of shoes from a shop assistant in New York, Sydney, or London, we see the life of the person as a human that has meaning.

We see the organization he or she works for, the immigrant workers who work behind the store, their stories, disappointments and aspirations.

We see the people assembling the shoes in factories in far off lands, their life and challenges, their children, and the schools they attend.

We see the farmers grazing the cattle that will end up as leather for the shoes will use. This is all part of an interdependent chain of activity and being. This creates meaning. We are connected as one system.

If we accept these interconnections, interrelationships, and interdependencies, we have a collective unconscious. Jung went further and posed that there is a collective unconscious as a prehistoric collection of information, instincts, myths, stories, images, universal symbols that are universally understood across all cultures.

The ‘collective unconscious’ embeds all our ancestral experience and concepts of religion and morality. This inherited content is passed from generation to generation and is part of a transcendental reality, linking mind to mind and mind to nature. All people are born with this reservoir of our experience as a species.

Although we are not conscious of it, this collective past influences our present behaviour. Some experiences that may come from the ‘collective unconscious’ include, love at first sight, déjà vu experiences, immediate recognition of some symbols, reactions to music (like the drum beat), and near death experiences.

To Jung this proved some connection with all nature through the ‘collective unconscious’. Jung likens the external world to one of illusion, something similar to the world of Maya in Hindu theology.

Our egos (jivatman) are individual souls which are actually extensions of the one and only Atman, universal energy or God who allows an independent identity to manifest itself in part of himself. Through this we are all connected, independent, but interdependent. When we die we realize the illusion that we actually existed as we are part of God.

These ideas were considered esoteric at the time but are becoming integrated into the concepts of quantum mechanics today. If we disagree with Jung, we can believe in institutionalized religion, a supreme being and our supreme place on Earth.

Another alternative is that we are biological robots with brains that function in a similar manner to a computer with schemata as programs. When we die, the brain goes dead and our identity is lost, just like machine-code being erased from the RAM when a computer is switched off.

A realization of the humility of our true self will bring a profound realization of our interdependence with each other and the world around us. This decreases our sense of “I am” and “me”, increasing our concern for all life.

If we stare at the planets in the night sky and try to imagine the distances from Earth involved, we soon realize how insignificant we really are. We are just one person in the whole universe, so how can I focus on ‘me’ without harming the whole.

We have no worldly justification for our self centeredness, yet our emotionally attached self is usually painfully connected to the emotions and desires that we have learned to have from our social constructions. This colours our sense of humility, takes away our awareness, sense of fairness to others and our innate sense of morality.

Our abstractions have evolved to a paradigm where everything is commoditized to the extent where relationships can be seen as a trade of favours, affection, support, sex, and service in exchange for the fulfilment of personal needs and wants by others. Value to the individual and others is the denominator and definer of relationships.

Our tendency as individuals is to make decisions that tend to benefit the self over decisions that fulfil ethical obligations to others. Again there is a conflict between ‘what is best for me?’ and ‘what is the right thing to do?’ which is usually answered according to the constructs of our self.

Everyday decisions often have paradoxes due to their particular situational circumstances that are not covered by civic and legal codes.

For example a salesperson desperately requiring a large order to achieve his or her budget, may accept an order from a customer knowing that his or her firm doesn’t have the capacity to supply it, which would put the customer to great inconvenience.

In such cases only decisions based upon our “true nature” without the influence of emotions will be able to govern ethical conduct. The ultimate test is whether we feel comfortable, where the answer will most often depend upon the level of self one is anchored to [66]. Most issues are complex situations, not easily addressed by ethical rules, thus relying on our intuition for solutions.

Some people don’t realize we are doing destructive things that hurt others. Sometimes this hurt can lead to grave and serious illness. If we switch our self from the usual “I am” to a different viewpoint, i.e., the feeling of being superior, equal, or inferior to another, from one of these viewpoints we can generate new sets of emotions.

For example, if we take a superior view point to others we may generate intensive highhandedness. If we view others as equals we may generate feelings of jealousy and competitiveness, and if we view others from an inferior position, we may generate feelings of jealousy and envy.

This helps us see the perspectives of our false sense of ourselves and the source of our behaviours. If we can substitute humility for our emotions (humility does not mean subservience or inferiority), we can see our relationships without the emotional intensities that existed before. We can see our inter-connectiveness, how our actions hurt people, and how we stray from our innate morality.

It’s easy for us to be destructive. It’s easy for us to be complacent. It’s easy for us to follow society and go with the flow. What is difficult is to accept who we are, and from the humility of our self be creative. Humankind is good at being destructive and maintaining what is, as it feels secure.

One of our deepest desires is to feel secure and this is what society and belongingness provides. Our innate sense of humility has been covered up by our primal sense of greed.

On the scale of civilization, many nations have amassed more resources than they really need. This drives the economic system where greed translates into borrowing and consumption. All done because this is what society expects and we are shaped and nurtured by what society collectively values.

As Garrett Hardin postulated, justice, liberation and natural self determination, serve to cover up the true motives of greed, envy, and power.

Our economics paradigm is partly based on our greed, rational in the sense of being efficient. Therefore the cheapest and most economical way of doing things is the most desirable.

As resources don’t necessarily reflect their true costs and the cost of waste doesn’t as yet form any part of the accounting system, our current methods of exploiting resources, farming, and manufacturing will always be unsustainable.

Mines, logging, conventional mono-cropping systems, massive centralized urban development creating mega-cities, are affecting life as we know it, changing both the balances of the eco-system and the psycho-system of humanity.

Our consumption has great costs whether we like it or not. Production and consumption are expressions of power. We have the power to utilize the resources of the Earth and produce what we want.

This marking of the environment is not much different than cats marking their territories with their urine. Our behaviour is just sophisticated animal behaviour. We don’t know any better as we are socially programmed to act this way.

Technology has enabled the exponential growth of consumption. Through technology we have been able to extract more resources from our biosphere and let go of the wastes back into the troposphere with the blessings of institutionalized religion which deemed mankind the master of all species on the Earth.

The digging up of our resources, amassing them for ourselves, and dumping the wastes after our consumption is just the reality created by our primal and material self on a global scale. And just as our primal and material self operates, all this was done without much thinking as a collective being.

Rather this is being done through our ignorance and reptilian greed – disconnected from our reasoning. Our cerebral cortex is still dominated by our reptilian brain which keeps us territorial animals, greedy to amass more resources for select groups, without the ability to see consequences of our actions.

Our discoveries, knowledge, development have all been undertaken in the fear of survival and in the fulfilment of our collective ego to show how great we are over others, with the narrative of “we are superior to you”.

Our existence through socialization and religion on Earth has been arrogant, when we are actually only one of many passing species calling the Earth our home.

Humans have been on the earth for about 100,000 years, only a very short time in relation to the age of the universe, which is approximately 4,000 billion years old. Civilization only developed around 4,000 years ago, yet over the last 200 years, the biosphere has been threatened in a profound way, unprecedented by any other species over the last billion years.

Nature has created almost two million species of which humankind are only one of them. The earth has been inhabited by an additional 7.8 million species which don’t exist today.

Humankind depends upon the other species and environment for survival, yet humankind has developed it’s own arrogance and ignorance of the environment, enforced by collective beliefs, which are reinforced by culture, religion, morals, and laws.

It is the system of current ethics and beliefs that are restricting us, as life on Earth is sustainable, but we are not. This narrow ego-centric sense of who we are is only a social construction that has been at the centre of our humanity, holding back progress.

For example, up until the Seventeenth Century, we thought that the Sun, Moon, and planets of our solar system all revolved around the Earth.

We actually own nothing. “I am” and “me” is only a passing entity that is custodian of an illusion. We share the Earth, can never control it, we can temporarily occupy it, but the moment we think we own it, our awareness falls into one of the domains of our self that deludes our perceptions and sense of morality.

A custodian rather than an owner has a responsibility of mutual respect to share the resources of the Earth and consider the other custodians. Taking would be on the basis of need rather than want. Therefore our ethics and responsibilities are not civic, are not philosophical, are not doctrine, are not dogma, they are part of our innate true nature.

Our emotions enable us to take specific paths within a universe full of multiple possibilities of reality. It is here that our emotions override our innate sense of morality taking us away from the potential universe that our true self could prevail within.

As emotions are universal to different cultures common archetypes of greed, indulgence, envy, jealousy, need for power and control, etc., take us down a universe of reality that is parallel but different from a universe of innate humility.

The universe is a state of mind and through the dominating archetypes of emotion, they become physical ones with phenomenon occurring according to the laws of the archetype governing it.

We are locked through socialized psychic constitutions with certain sets of emotions that endlessly go around and around creating the same history, without any possibility of seeing that we are hurting others.

It is the archetypes that we see the world through that gives meaning to the world. This defines our own reality and potential future possibilities. The values we put on things are the “truths” – all reality is our construction. As Jung postulated, mankind is the second creator of the world and gives it objective existence.

Towards New Ethics and Sustainability

The problem with the above arguments about ethics and our responsibilities towards sustainability is that the ideas of self humility are too far away from the mainstream of world philosophical thought.

This was unlike the American Indian, Australian Aboriginal, and New Zealand Maori civilizations that saw their role in life to act as custodian of the land for future generations. These were sustainable civilizations that only demised because of invasion and massacre. The contemporary world is caught up in the narrative of economic development and progress.

The ego-centric focus on “I” and “me” prevents humanity even understanding what the true problems really are. Current liberal ethics that most societies are based upon have little room for personal enlightenment. Institutionalized religion sees personal enlightenment as an affront to traditional theology and is therefore not condoned.

Our personal sense of sustainability is confused with the myths that religion has given us, deeming ourselves as the master of all species, where in fact we are just one of the species and caretaker of the earth for the next generation.

Through our technical progress we feel that we can control nature, which we can’t, so when we realize that we are not immortal and don’t control nature, we either become spiritual beings, work hard to build a legacy to surpass our own death, or become psychotic trying to deny the truth.

Environmental destruction simply continues because it creates profits for those in control of the resources and the global markets that demand them. Powerful organizations both control and depend upon this.

As we saw with the 2008 bail outs of US corporations, they are a protected species, not just embedded within the fabric of capitalism, but they are capitalism itself. We have also seen that central planning does no better of a job than the capitalist model, and the capitalist model itself is under threat.

The capitalist system, although providing growth, has failed in providing wellbeing and equity in most national scenarios and on a global basis.

Economies are facing grave macroeconomic imbalances that are reflected in high rates of unemployment, massive budgeting deficits, highly unstable currencies, balance of payments imbalances, and highly volatile resource, commodity, and equity markets.

In addition most country’s resources have been exploited at rates that will see their depletion within a relatively short time span. A by-product of the current capitalist system is the increase of carbon and other ‘greenhouse’ gases released into the atmosphere and waterways to the extent never seen before in the history of world evolution.

This has been accompanied by high rates of urbanization, the loss of traditional ways of life, the declining rate of biodiversity on the planet, stress, frustration, crime, mental illness and suicide. Absolute poverty in the underdeveloped world is still in mammoth numbers and relative poverty is on the rise in the developed world.

The prevailing nature of ego-centric organizations and the geo-political divide and their conquering mentality is driving this destruction even further. Our unsustainable practices are linked to the myths that humankind has created to cope with our mortality and powerlessness.

We live with a “scorched Earth mentality”, with little concern for the coming generations after us. Current solutions on the table for solving climate, food, population, resource, and sustainability issues are like what Ulrich Beck called “a bicycle brake on an international jet”.

The restriction of plastic shopping bags, reduction of air conditioning temperatures, and the use of biodiesel are measures that won’t make a significant difference. These measures look and sound good on the surface, and are measures governments and corporations are employing as a fallacy to save the world.

For every plastic shopping bag saved, a tree is being illegally chopped down in a tropical rainforest somewhere without any hesitation at all. More ecological problems are caused by the primitive rather than industrialized practices.

Most popular literature on sustainability is devoid on the morality of the issue and offer a functionalist and instrumentalist approach within the narrative of branding, strategy, competitive advantage, and market. They offer solutions to the symptoms rather than the root causes of the problems.

There needs to be a paradigm change in our logic and narrative that can transcend our rigid and culturally set ways of doing things to a new level. The current ecological crisis is primarily a crisis of our own ideas and approaches to the human-nature nexus. We have measured success and wealth by what we have, therefore a new definition of wealth and success is required.

Our development must take account of both the present and the future to meet our entire needs and keep the environment in equilibrium. This means redefining the goals of humanity which would result in new cultural and social traditions that can form the foundations of a new society.

This will involve replacing technological dominating, reductionist, mechanistic orientation with an anti-mechanistic orientation that promotes a new social order. Anything else would be superficial, appeasing, and stopgap.

Ethics and sustainability cannot be treated as being independent of everything else within our lives. These concerns must be integrated into the person before they can be integrated into the organization. To think otherwise would be a big mistake.

Our economic system is supported on the basis that human beings are rational and calculate matters according to their own interests. This translates into selfishness and greed where natural resources are harvested and used wastefully, often in the most uncreative ways.

Likewise technology increases productivity and enables the production of surpluses which can benefit many. If this waste did not exist and our resources were distributed fairly, poverty would no longer exist today. The problems of the world can be fixed by a matter of redistribution.

In addition, through proper practices more than double the population of today can be fed through agriculture. By definition there can be no sustainability without equity.

However in actual fact poverty is not the real problem, it’s only a symptom. The real problem is the hijacking of our innate humility by our emotions. Most attempts to solve world poverty have failed because they have been motivated by fame and gain by many of the World’s institutions. How many times have they tried? How many times have they failed?

Leadership is a matter of morality, rather than a tool for looking after sectional interests. Even our concept of freedom is based on individualism. Liberal parliamentary democracies are adversarial in nature where the winner takes all.

The world is always changing according to the doctrine of natural selection. Natural selection is the basis of competition through the Schumpeterian concept of creative destruction that has driven our evolution and development. According to the doctrine of natural selection the species struggle for survival culminates with only the fittest surviving.

However we are finding out plants, animals, and even the biosphere works in cooperation rather than competition with other entities to survive. We still live in a state of blissful ignorance; the metaphor of Adam and Eve taking the forbidden fruit of sustainability.

Our current practices as a species have evolved out of our lack of awareness and cultural ignorance of the consequences for survival. We still have not developed the correct practices required for survival in our global situation today.

The shifting balance of power between humankind and the Earth is a question of great importance. Natural selection is about trial and error until a species determines the current practices that are necessary for survival. Our constructed human paradigms need to change.

To truly achieve this requires awareness. Seeing through our dysfunctional behaviours needs awareness. Vision needs awareness, living in the now and a balanced locus of control. This is vital in tapping our psychic and physical energies.

We must also forget about our past stories of successes and failure so we can look at any opportunities in unique ways, rather than the ways of the past that emotionalize what we see. We must also eliminate the hopes and excitement we might have for the future so that we can evaluate the issues without allowing expectation to influence us.

The author doesn’t mean perfection, as perfection itself is just another form of emotional defence. Perfection may stop learning, which is vital to any opportunity, strategy, and organization. The goal should be balance between all the competencies we have, rather than perfection in any one area.

It’s the journey we must value, not the end. Reaching the end is just another delusion which puts finality to something, where it may just be the beginning. Systems never have beginnings and ends. Believing one has reached the end will stifle initiative, creativity, and ingenuity in favour of complacency.

Intellect triggers rational consideration and adversarial debate about issues which brings up our defences preventing feeling and intuition. Mastery is not based on intelligence and knowledge. It’s about experience and the feelings one derives. It’s possible to read everything and gain instruction about how to drive a car.

But until one has actually sat in the car and tried to drive it, one will never experience the feeling of what it is like to drive a car. Without experience intelligence and knowledge has little use. Awareness is the key to feeling. If we are not aware, we can never experience.

Intelligence and knowledge without awareness is just like a book on a shelf. Without the knowledge from the book being used and felt, it is primarily useless. Mastery is not about success, it is also about failure and learning. True mastery is about persistence and perseverance.

Once our awareness develops, we will start to see the multiple perspectives the environment offers. Just like the line drawing of the cube at the beginning of this chapter, everything has multiple perspectives.

However these multiple perspectives can bring contradictions and confusion. Our intelligence and knowledge cannot easily make sense or meaning out of it. Only our feelings from experience and intuitive skills develop a perspective from which we can make meaning.

We have to learn that life is not based on fact, but perspective. The major decisions made in business and war, have been made from perspective, rather than the facts. Perspective defines our reality and how we respond accordingly, which is counterintuitive to how we have been made to believe we should think. We need awareness to have true wisdom.

The simple act of listening shows how we sometimes wander through life with a low level of awareness.

How many times when someone is speaking to you, are you preoccupied with other things?

How often do we daydream when others are speaking?

How often do you believe that what you think is right and what the other has to say is not worth listening to?

How often are you just waiting for an opportunity to espouse what you think?

How often are you just thinking of rebuttals, arguments against what a person is saying rather than actually listening to the content of what they are actually saying?

How often are you making judgments about the person speaking or what they are saying?

How often are you looking for an opportunity to disagree, agree, or run away?

How often are you evaluating and comparing what a person is saying against what you believe?

How often do you fail to seek clarification about something you don’t understand?

Do you try and control the interaction by trying to dominate the conversation? Our listening habits usually show that our level of personal awareness is low and we are influenced by so much of our own emotion just in the act of listening to someone.

This is at the cost of seeing new perspectives and exercising our ability to empathize with others.

The ability to listen effectively is a powerful tool in developing awareness, empathy, humility, and consequently understand new perspectives.

Listening is much more than hearing, it involves being attentive to what others say, observing emotion, behaviour and body language, facial expressions, and fighting off our own internal distractions that lessen of ability to listen.

Listening requires much more discipline, attention, and concentration than we expect. Think about it, how much self discipline do we need to really effectively listen to someone?

Once we have achieved the discipline, attention, and concentration really needed to listen, we realize how powerful a tool listening is in understanding what a person has to say, and from where emotionally a person is saying it.

Listening skills can be developed and refined through active and reflective listening techniques, where the listener repeats, paraphrases and reflects upon what the speaker is saying as a means of clarifying the message that the speaker is intending to convey to us.

This is a personal struggle. When we are aware that our thinking is slipping into the negative, focus on thinking uplifting thoughts, as the brain can only process one thought at a time. In this way, through disciplined practice, one can reduce the negativity within the mind, by changing the thinking flow, in a similar way one changes slides on a projector.

Our identity begins to evolve, becoming sustainable and able to flow with the forces of change around us. We are aware of our own emotions and what delusions they try to develop in us.

Once we can see through these delusions, our ego-centric tendencies begin giving way to a real sense of humility. Our innate sense of morality emerges.

We see the crisis of meaning around us, the lack of morality, greed and selfishness, capitalism for what it really is, and the unsustainable ways of our society.

We begin to question society’s dreams and replace them with our own, gaining our personal freedom from the repression of our society, our freedom to have and follow our own aspirations. This is where our personal transformation takes place and we reincarnate or regenerate into a new sense of self and orientation towards life.

It is only when we have this personal ability to change that we can work through the pain of changing organizations. Leadership is about shifting style to fit changing situations, although values and ethics will remain as solid as a rock.

Liberation is about awareness to see new ideas, opportunities within a complex environment and have the confidence to transcend our current state of mind through enacting upon our new perceptions.

The most probable ethical leadership qualities that will have importance to management for perhaps the rest of this century may include;

A leader must have empathy to understand. However this empathy must not be mechanical, it must be a way of being. People need the quality of the leader’s presence in the ‘here and now’ committed wholeheartedly to the interaction.

A leader should always have an ethical framework within his or her mindset that looks at possibilities that maximize benefits for the Earth and welfare of the people.

These ethics should be applied consistently without any lapse. This may often mean that many decisions may not make financial gain for the firm in the short term. This may also mean that some decisions may not have a clearly immediate ethical path to follow. This will be a quality that will be extremely critical to the survival of firms in the future.

A leader must perform his or her duties without fear or favour to stakeholders. Decisions and appointments must be merit based, fair, transparent, sincere, and not in any deceitful way to the public.

A leader should never exploit others.

A leader should ensure that his or her organization puts more resources back into the community that it takes out.

A leader must be close to his or her people, working alongside (if possible), and interested in what is happening. Leading by example is the most powerful way to win respect and change the assumptions, beliefs, and values of a firm when needed.

A leader should be very self disciplined and never lose their temper, succumb to anger, or show their stress, etc., to others.

A leader should not be motivated by personal gain and fame.

A leader should show humility and not arrogance, and

A leader should not be deluded by past successes and rest on their or the company’s laurels.

Research has shown that high ethical standards on peoples’ behaviour has a high influence on the level of trust by potential customers, suppliers, financiers, and employees, the public and business partners and as such creates opportunities for a firm that may not have otherwise existed.

The mistake people make is that they may do these things once, when this must be a continual process, a journey, not an end. Just look at the number of declining Fortune List companies. Morality and sustainability are linked to survival, and survival is linked to adaptation, which humans are loathed at doing.

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Murray Hunter and Geoffrey Williams

New evidence is emerging that the Chartered Management Institute (CMI), may be losing customers and franchise partners in some of its major markets in the Asia-Pacific region due to the non-accreditation of CMI certificates in APEC markets.

Our earlier review of CMI training certificates offered by 141 centres in 39 countries revealed that the CMI does not have prior approval or accreditation in any country outside of the United Kingdom and is using commercial partnerships to pass-off non-regulated certificates to thousands of unsuspecting learners around the world.

This could amount to qualifications fraud and raises serious region wide concerns which have triggered investigations by the regulatory and accreditation bodies to add to existing civil litigation and criminal investigations against senior CMI officers and managers.

Asia-Pacific markets crumbling at the edges?

The APEC region is one of the largest regional markets for CMI accounting for 54 centres or 38% of their overseas franchises according to the CMI International Centres webpage.

The CMI collects lucrative franchise fees to establish commercial partnerships and takes a share of annual revenues from selling certificates with the franchisee. In recent court disclosures the CMI claimed its Malaysian operations bring £1.5 million per year.

CMI APEC certificate accreditation status

The following is a summary of the status of CMI certificate accreditation across the maim APEC markets CMI are now serving.

Australia

Qualification fraud is a serious issue in Australia and by late 2025, the Australian Skills Quality Authority (ASQA) had cancelled over 30,000 Vocational Education and Training (VET) qualifications following a crackdown on non-compliant “shonky” training providers.

ASQA has confirmed that the CMI certificates sold in Australia are not accredited or regulated by them and a complaint to the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency (TEQSA) appears to have impacted CMI partners within days.

Deakin University previously offered a Level 7 Diplomas in Strategic Management and Leadership from CMI with their MBA and MBA (Healthcare Management) without any extra classes, assignments or exams. They claimed the Level 7 certificates were accredited.

Swinburne University claimed their Graduate Certificate in Organisational Coaching was jointly accredited by the CMI which is not an accreditation organization.

Both universities have now removed all mention of CMI and “CMI Accreditation” from their websites.

Singapore

The Singapore Institute of Management (SIM) is listed as the only CMI partner in the country. Following our enquiries, SIM has confirmed that they no longer offer CMI programmes and have contacted CMI to stop representing them as a provider.

They have also reached out to their UK university partner, the University of Birmingham, who are reviewing CMI membership and have paused offering the CMI certificates according to SIM.

Hong Kong

All non-local programmes and courses must be registered or be exempted to be allowed to operate in Hong Kong.

The CMI sells Level 5 certificates with the Hong Kong Polytechnic University. The Associate Professor in charge of the programme claimed that the local university programme is accredited and regulated under the Hong Kong Council for Accreditation of Academic and Vocational Qualifications (HKCAAVQ) and referred our query to the CMI APEC manager Goldie Polycarp.

Separately HKCAAVQ confirmed that CMI certificates are not accredited by them and have opened a file on the matter for future reference.

The other two Hong Kong centres on the CMI website, Consort Management Consultants Ltd and Stanford Education Limited still appear to be inactive. Stanford Education Limited is facing a misrepresentation complaint sent to the President and General Counsel at Stanford University.

The CMI is a signatory to the prevention of qualifications fraud plan from its UK regulator Ofqual, which commits them to strict standards of integrity in dealing with qualifications fraud either by them or their partners. Breaches are punishable by fines or deregistration of certificates, the partners or even the CMI itself.

The CMI Royal Charter allows the CMI under Article 3(f) to issue certificates overseas only if prior approval or accreditation has been obtained from the appropriate education accreditation authorities in the country in which they are selling the certificates. The CMI must also fully comply with the laws of the country concerned under Article 3(v) of its charter.

The CMI have repeatedly claimed that their certificates are fully accredited and their marketing and franchise partners rely on these claims in the hard-sell of their services. Now it is clear that these claims just do not stand up.

In addition the absence of any overseas accreditation renders CMI certificates “non-regulated” qualifications purporting to be “regulated” credentials when they do not meet the legal requirements of countries where they are sold. This could amount to qualifications fraud under the Ofqual guidelines.

The associate director for CMI APEC Melissa Patrick was contacted and no reply has been received at the time of publishing this article.

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As a charity, the Chartered Management Institute (CMI) enjoys generous tax exemptions and is generally exempt from Corporation Tax and Income Tax on most income and gains if it is used for charitable purposes.

Main tax exemptions and reliefs include income and gains on donations and legacies, which CMI does not have and grants, and investment income which is a small part of CMI declared income. Other reliefs include 80% mandatory business rates relief, full Stamp Duty exemption and Gift Aid tax reclaims.

The main source of revenue for CMI comes from the sale of certificates directly or indirectly through commercial franchises in the UK and increasingly overseas. CMI has around 140 franchises in around 39 countries outside of the United Kingdom.

This form of income from trading is only exempt if the profits come from the charity’s “primary purpose.” Commercial trading is only exempt if it is “Small Trading” below £80,000 for a charity of the size of CMI.

A separate company is needed for extensive non-primary trading to protect the parent charity’s tax status. CMI has two such companies, one in the UK and one overseas but most of its revenue is not directed through these for-profit enterprises.

Revenue not consistent with other annual report claims

The key concern is how much of CMI’s income is from the “primary purpose” of a charity or from commercial enterprises around the world?

The difficulty in assessing CMI income is that there are competing claims in various statutory and non-statutory disclosures including the Annual Report 2025, the Charity Commission data and their marketing materials.

According to public domain sources the CMI “Total Membership Community” has risen from around 70,000 when it was granted its Royal Charter in 2002/3 to more than 230,000 in 2024/25. While there has also been a rise in revenue from £12.5 million to £32.3 million in the same period, the average income per member has fallen from £180 to £140.

Data on the split between “Professional (Paying) Members” and “Learners & Students” is available for the last four years. Professional members account for around 35% and learners for the remaining 65%. Learner fees, associated with commercial training programmes offered by external training businesses, are slightly higher on average than professional member fees and so revenue from this source accounts for 68% of total revenue.

According to the CMI Annual Report 2025 the revenue from membership was £5.34 million but based on declared members and average fees it could be almost four times higher at £19.08 million.

Similarly, revenue from qualifications for leaners and students was reported at £26.54 million in the last Annual Report but could be as high as £40.50 million based on registrations and fees in the public domain.

In addition to this anomaly, CMI does not provide a breakdown of where the revenues come from in terms of teaching, selling certificates, “CMI Approved” centre franchise fees or other commercial contracts and activities.

There is also no breakdown of revenue from the United Kingdom versus revenue from overseas commercial franchises, which would not in principle be tax exempt. Based on our earlier estimates these could account for 20-40% of CMI income and in fact declared revenue has been 40.2% lower than potential revenue on average over the last four accounting years.

In total there is a potential gap of £79.23 million in revenue over the same period, with a potential gap of £27.28 million in the last financial year alone. The gap has also been rising from 30.9% to 45.8% over the same period. In other words there is potential under-reporting of revenue by CMI based on estimates of members, learners and fees.

Lifting the veil on CMI financials

There is an apparent difference between the revenue figures reported in CMI Annual Reports and the potential revenue based on the membership and learner numbers in the same reports and typical commercial fees for these services available in the public domain.

Where does the difference come from? Is it from margins given to franchisees and learning centres overseas? It is given as commission and fees to agents selling CMI-branded certificates and services? Are booked prices lower than the ticket prices charged on commercial terms by business enterprises selling CMI certificates? No doubt CMI has an explanation for this.

The business models used by CMI to achieve its growing revenues are not fully explained in the public domain and there is a lack of transparency in whether the revenue is for the “public purpose” as required under charity and tax law.

As a Royal Charity it seems appropriate that His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs (HRMC) should “lift the veil” on CMI activities, especially to determine whether revenue and expenditures meet the criteria for tax exemption, to clarify whether the CMI is paying its fair share of tax. Our research and observations will be provided to HMRC to assist in their investigations.

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According to the Ministry of Education’s Special Education database, 314,000, or 17 percent of the students enrolled in primary schools, have some form of dyslexia. Studies in the United Kingdom indicate that at least 80 percents of students with dyslexia in the UK are never diagnosed.

Dyslexia is a general learning disorder that involves difficulty in reading and writing, due to not being able to listen and identify speech sounds and relate them to the written word, and make the necessary sounds to communicate back. Dyslexia is neurological, and as such cant be cured.

The general signs of dyslexia are difficult to recognize before a child attends school. The only tell-tale sign is the child maybe very slow to pick up speech as an infant. At pre-school and early primary school, the child will be observed as a slow learner. The varying severity of dyslexia often makes it very difficult to spot and diagnose, especially by untrained teachers.

The first obvious signs may only appear in the early primary grades where a child has difficulty in learning new words, reading and repeating nursery rhymes. As the child’s education continues, he or she will have trouble understanding and grasping new concepts presented in class.

Thus, in the class situation, a child will start falling behind the rest of the students, where social problems will begin to manifest. This will lead to loss of self-esteem, lack of confidence, and possible depression at an early age, particularly if the child is not diagnosed. Often, they are targeted by other students for bullying, just because they are different.

During these years, the child will struggle with English comprehension, doing mathematics, solving maths problems, and learning a foreign language.

Dyslexia has no correlation with intelligence. This is a mistake many make in assessing these children.

Dyslexia is sometimes associated with other learning disorders as dyspraxia, the difficulty of performing coordinated movements, dyscalculia, the difficulty in dealing with numbers, dysgraphia, the difficulty of turning thoughts into the written word, and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), a hyperactive behavioural disorder.

In addition, dyslexia may be associated with prosopagnosia, a condition where a person has difficulties recognising peoples faces. This will often be accompanied with a form of anonic aphasia, where a person has difficulty in remembering names.

Like dyslexia, all the above are neurological disorders. There is a probability these conditions may accompany dyslexia. Due to the complexity of these disorders, differing extremities along a spectrum, and differing sets of symptoms, they are extremely difficult to diagnose, outside a clinical situation, where cognitive tests are done.

When dyslexia is associated with other disorders, the child may find great difficulties in learning. This can lead to social integration problems, where on occasion they withdraw from parents, teachers and friends. With the addition of ADHA, students may be seen as class disrupters, being anxious and/or aggressive in the classroom.

Without any assistance, these students are likely to eventually just drop out of the education system, with low self-confidence and self-esteem. This often leads to delinquency.

If students can be diagnosed early, they can be assisted in the early years. This may require one to one speech therapy, and specialists assisting the child finding the best ways to learn. The key with dyslexic students is teaching them how to learn along side others. This is most desirable as it assists these students socially ingrate with people around them. Being segregated into any special needs classes may lead to social isolation in future years.

If dyslexia is not discovered and diagnosed, the child will go through school life continually struggling to understand new work. Children not knowing and understanding their disability, may just go on living with low self-esteem, because they will continue to compare themselves with others through life.

In most cases, this leads to stress, anxiety and depression in life, where they will be incorrectly treated with drugs. For example, they may be medically treated for depression, when the real problem is learning to live with their cognitive disadvantages, due to dyslexia. In addition, they may continue through life having trouble with relationships.

Dyslexia is of concern to about one in ten people. Un-diagnosed they may have trouble progressing in any career within regimented organizations, which most are. However, if they know how to compensate for their cognitive weakness, chances are they can go on and have a fulfilling career.

There is a strong positive correlation between ADHD and successful entrepreneurs. A number of studies have shown that people with ADHD can become high achievers with the energy, motivation, and give them a propensity towards action. However, ADHD may also bring impulsiveness, which could lead to recklessness. Once again diagnosis is the key, so those who have ADHD know how to cope with the behavioural traits it brings. One can build new strengths by understanding their weaknesses.

Dyslexia is a massive challenge for an already overloaded and under resourced education system. Putting the responsibility of finding and diagnosing dyslexic people by the teacher is grossly insufficient. Special and compulsory training is needed to be incorporated within the teacher training curriculum as a minimum.

To support teachers, there must be a sufficient special education infrastructure behind them. This is made even more difficult, as the types and degrees of the dyslexic grouping requires more art than science to assist students learn how to learn, and overcome their weaknesses. There are no textbook remedies, where solutions are found through deductive problem solving. This is especially the case where these conditions when mixed together at different intensities require creative solutions.

Such an approach will assist many people live fulfilling lives. This can turn many people who might be dismissed as losers into high achievers.

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