Anwar Says Malaysia 'Does Not Believe in Spheres of Influence'
Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim says his country's "approach is one of active non-alignment" during a speech at the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore. "Stability does not come from carving up the map but from creating space for all," he tells the audience. (Source: Other)
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Yahoo
30 minutes ago
- Yahoo
So now it's official. The ‘graduate premium' is a myth
Have you ever thought about the main reason why school leavers keep choosing to go to university and higher education (HE) participation rates continue rising? Of course there are many reasons; a chance for young adults to get away from their parents, ease of application and acceptance, it looks more fun than going to work, an interest in the subject… But what is the main driver that underpins society's messaging and ends up channelling 18-year-olds into university rather than the workforce? Well, it's the perception that there is a 'graduate premium'; and put simply, the narrative goes like this – 'Don't worry about the debt, you're going to get paid more to make up for it'. And the HE sector well knows the importance of maintaining the societal belief in the graduate premium to drive up their customer numbers. They are relentless in their efforts, issuing constant public comments, articles and self-commissioned reports, often via sympathetic think-tanks, claiming the limitless powers of HE to deliver a graduate premium to all who enrol. But this positive advertising is starting to contrast starkly with increasing evidence, now in plain sight, of graduates' difficulties getting jobs as well as the low pay on offer of not much above minimum wage. There is a growing realisation that we are burdening too many of our young adults with morale-sapping student debt for their whole working life, with little or no corresponding improvement in their career prospects. There are also concerns that we are building up a dangerous stockpile of student loans that won't be repaid, only for the taxpayer to pick up the tab. Meanwhile, money is flowing freely into the bloated HE sector via unwitting students being used as pawns. The Government has announced a White Paper due out this summer regarding Post-16 Education. So given the importance of the notion of a graduate premium, you would assume that the Government has ensured there is robust informative data to inform policy-making. Well, sadly not. There is only one Government report, the annual Graduate Labour Market Statistics, which attempts to quantify the graduate premium; and my research shows that it is fundamentally flawed. Some will say that the IFS Graduate Lifetime Earnings report from 2020 also 'proves' a graduate premium, but my research argues that it is just as flawed. My findings are already supported by the Royal Statistical Society, and the Office for Statistics Regulation (OSR) has also found a case in my favour and agreed that there is a problem with graduate premium data. The OSR has intervened and forced the hand of the Department for Education (DfE), who admitted in their release today that their figures are misleading – and to such an extent that even though this has been a mainstay of graduate outcome reporting since 2007, they have decided to cease publication. The DfE have agreed that a report demonstrating the difference between the career pay outcomes of those with equivalent A-level results is necessary, and they intend to produce it as part of their LEO data e.g. comparing school leavers with three Cs who attended university and those that did not. But the inadequacy of the data doesn't stop there. Using mathematical modelling, I've found that since we surpassed 30 per cent HE participation as long as 20 years ago, the marginal graduates added – increasingly being drawn from school leavers with relatively lower prior academic attainment – haven't earnt any graduate premium at all on average. Yet this phenomenon isn't explored in official Government statistics. When graduates do earn a premium, there is still the age-old statistical issue that correlation does not prove causation. For the majority of graduates, the job they end up doing will have no meaningful connection to the degree subject itself. So you must question why the official Government statistics keep churning out data that implies that studying for a degree was the main causation reason for the higher earnings, whereas in fact it is more likely their pre-existing attributes such as academic ability and ambition. Furthermore, when there is a link between the degree subject and the graduate's career, did they genuinely need to study academically for three whole years at great cost to themselves beforehand? Couldn't the course have been far shorter? And to what extent could it have been cheaper and more effective for them to start work at 18 and learn from colleagues, undergoing job-based formal and informal training in order to progress? You can often learn far more in three weeks of doing the job than you can in three years of theoretical study. The existing statistics don't explore this at all and by implication see their main role as demonstrating what degree is better than another. They act on the assumption that for non-manual work, everybody should get a 3-year degree before entering the workplace, rather than whether a degree is necessary at all. Until now, these inadequate statistics have allowed the sector to hijack the official figures and mislead the public and Government regarding the benefits of higher education, claiming that 'everybody' will be able to benefit from the supposed average premium. What is needed is root and branch reform of graduate statistics. I believe it would provide compelling evidence that surpassing around 25-30 per cent HE participation was a monumental mistake, and we certainly should never have let it reach the existing 50 per cent. The vicious spiral of never-ending increasing participation is condemning ever more of our young adults to pay huge amounts for unnecessary degrees. The Government's ideologically driven policies are led by a misguided false notion of 'opportunity for all'; but in the hands of a commercially-driven sector it has become a gross exercise in mass exploitation. The only way for this to end is for the Government to introduce a sensible, pragmatic cap on student numbers, calculated based on useful data – not the misleading data currently being produced. Paul Wiltshire is a parent campaigner against Mass HE and is the author of 'Why is the average Graduate Premium falling' Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. 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Bloomberg
34 minutes ago
- Bloomberg
Israeli Assets Gain as Traders Gauge Netanyahu Coalition Woes
Israel's bonds and stocks rose as markets began factoring in that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government was at risk of collapse, an outcome that some traders view as a positive for the economy. The government's dollar bond due in 2048 jumped more than a cent on the dollar to 74 cents, one of Thursday's best performers across emerging markets. Israel's benchmark TA-35 stock index extended a recent record and the shekel traded near two-year highs.
Associated Press
an hour ago
- Associated Press
Elon Musk is gone, but DOGE's actions are hard to reverse. The US Institute of Peace is a case study
WASHINGTON (AP) — The staff was already jittery. The raiders from Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency had disposed of the U.S. Institute of Peace board, its acting president and its longtime outside counsel. But until 9:30 p.m. on Friday, March 28, there was hope the damage might somehow be limited. Then termination notices started popping up in personal emails. That was only the start. After ending his sojourn in Washington, Musk left behind a wounded federal government. DOGE's playbook was consistent: Show up physically, take over the facility and information technology systems, fire the leadership and replace it with DOGE associates. Dismiss the staff. Move so quickly that the targets and the courts have little time to react, let alone reverse whatever damage has already occurred. Thousands of workers across the federal government saw the playbook in action over the last four months. But the Institute of Peace, a small, 300-employee organization, is unique: The blitz during its takeover has been, for the moment, reversed in court. The headquarters taken away in a weekend of lightning moves is back in the hands of its original board and acting president. The question they must answer now is a point that U.S. District Judge Beryl A. Howell made during one hearing: Even a win 'makes no promises' about how difficult or possible it will be to put the Institute of Peace back together. 'A bull in a China shop breaks a lot of things,' the judge said. Nearly three weeks since the judge delivered a win, the institute is slowly trying to reboot. But there are barriers, and winning might not mean full restoration. For other agencies and departments fighting their own DOGE battles, it is a cautionary tale. Targeting an agency aimed at fostering peace The Institute of Peace was created by Congress in the 1980s. President Ronald Reagan signed the bill into law in 1985. Described as an independent, nonprofit think tank funded by Congress, its mission has been to work to promote peace and prevent and end conflicts while working outside normal channels such as the State Department. When DOGE came knocking, it was operating in 26 conflict zones, including Pakistan, Afghanistan, Mali and Burkina Faso. The institute was one of four organizations targeted by President Donald Trump's Feb. 19 Executive Order 14217. The order said it was being enacted to 'dramatically reduce the size of the federal government.' The institute's acting president, career diplomat and former Ambassador George Moose, and longtime outside counsel George Foote tried to explain to DOGE representatives that the institute was an independent nonprofit outside the executive branch. That attempt was for naught. At 4 p.m. on March 14, most of the institute's board was fired by email. The lone holdovers were ex officio — Cabinet members Pete Hegseth and Marco Rubio and the National Defense University's president, Vice Adm. Peter Garvin. Within minutes of the emails, DOGE staff showed up and tried to get into the building but failed over the next several hours during a standoff. That, according to court documents, kicked off a weekend of pressure by the FBI on institute security personnel. DOGE returned the following Monday and got into the headquarters with help from the FBI and Washington police officers. Foote thought the local officers were there to expel the DOGE contingent but learned quickly they were not. He, security chief Colin O'Brien and others were escorted out by local authorities. 'They have sidearms and tasers and are saying you can't go anywhere but out that door,' Foote said. 'I had no choice. 'You guys have the guns, and I don't.'' The board filed a lawsuit the following day and asked for a temporary restraining order. Howell expressed dissatisfaction with DOGE's tactics but declined to restore the fired board members or bar DOGE staff from the headquarters. By then a DOGE associate, Kenneth Jackson, had been named as acting president of the organization by the ex officio board members. Employees held out hope that the organization would not be disassembled because Jackson was asking questions as if he might do an assessment of the organization's work, said Scott Worden, director of the Afghanistan and Central Asia programs. The staff knew what he'd done as the head of the U.S. Agency for International Development. Now Jackson was at the Institute of Peace, but they were hopeful 'we would have a process of explanation or review of our work,' Worden said. Then came March 28. The notices came alphabetically. By the time it was finished, shortly before midnight, almost all the institute's 300 employees had been let go. The actions reverberated The impact was 'profound and devastating on a few levels,' Worden said. First, employees at the institute are not government employees so they got no government benefits or civil service protections. Insurance also was gone — critical for employees fighting health problems. Partners abroad also suddenly lost their support and contacts. It left 'thousands of partners in a lurch,' he said. The lawyers representing board members in their lawsuit asked for a court hearing as soon as possible to head off rumors of more mayhem to come. But when they walked into courtroom 26A of the E. Barrett Prettyman Courthouse at 10 a.m. on April 1, the headquarters and other assets were gone, too. It was, Howell said at the hearing, 'a done deal.' Over the weekend, as workers reeled, DOGE was making personnel changes of its own. Jackson had given way to DOGE representative Nick Cavanaugh, whose name was on the documents that allowed DOGE to take control of Institute of Peace assets and transfer the headquarters — built in part with private donations — to the General Services Administration. Howell was incredulous that it had been accomplished in two days. In court, the Trump administration's attorney, Brian Hudak, laid out the timeline, making clear that the newly named president of the institute had not only been authorized to transfer the property but also the request had gone through proper channels. For the second time, Howell refused to stop the actions. Throughout hearings, Howell struggled with how to describe the institute — whether it was part of the executive branch and under the Republican president's authority. That was central to the case. The government argued that it had to fall under one of the three branches of government and it clearly wasn't legislative or judicial. Lawyers defending the government also said that because presidents appointed the board, presidents also had the authority to fire them. The White House also maintained that despite decades of operation and an annual budget of around $50 million, the institute had failed to bring peace and was rightfully targeted. Howell's May 19 opinion concluded that the institute 'ultimately exercises no Executive branch power under the Constitution but operates, through research, educational teaching, and scholarship, in the sensitive area of global peace.' 'In creating this organization,' the judge said, 'Congress struck a careful balance between political accountability, on the one hand, and partisan independence and stability, on the other.' She added that even if the organization was part of the executive branch, the law that created it set specific steps for firing the board members and none of those had been followed. Because the board was fired illegally, all subsequent actions — including replacing Moose, firing the staff and transferring the headquarters — were 'null and void,' she said in her ruling. The government filed a notice of appeal and asked Howell to stay her order. She said no. The government has requested a stay with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. What it looks like now Two weeks later, about 10% of the people who would normally be inside the headquarters, about 25 people, are there, doing maintenance, getting systems running and trying to get to the institute's funding. Any physical damage comes more from inattentiveness than malice — food that spoiled, leaks that went unfixed, popup security barriers needing maintenance. Desks are empty but with paperwork and files strewn across them, left by the speed of the takeover. O'Brien, the security officer, praised the General Services Administration and security managers who tried to keep the building going. But getting systems fully functioning will entail lots of work. 'We're the first ones to get behind the looking glass,' O'Brien said. Foote said those returning continue to try to locate and access the institute's funding. That includes funds appropriated for this fiscal year by Congress and the part of the endowment moved during the takeover. He said transferring funds within the federal government is 'complicated.' The result: Workers are furloughed, and overseas offices will remain closed. Nicoletta Barbera, acting director for the U.S. Institute of Peace's West Africa and Central Africa programs, is one of the furloughed workers. 'We had USIP representatives based in Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger that, overnight, were left with no support system from anyone here in HQ,' she said. The programs were focused on preventing terrorism by supporting women and young people, to 'identify signs of radicalization.' Barbera said a recent attack in Burkina Faso ended with 'hundreds of atrocities and deaths.' 'And I couldn't just stop but think, what if I could have continued our work there during this time?' she said. Moose has said the speed at which the organization gets back to work depends on numerous factors, including the appeals process. But, he said, there will likely be lasting damage — 'the traumatic effects this has had on the people who have been impacted by it.' 'And, obviously, that includes our own ... staff members,' Moose said, 'but it also extends to the people with whom we collaborate and work all around the world. That's going to be hard to repair.'
