October, 2005

So, how now brown cow? Where do we go from here? Random cliches aside, below are some of my personal thoughts on the current direction of academia in Malaysia.

A. Much Ado About Research

Over the past decade or so, research has become a key agenda in Malaysian academia. But we need to ask ourselves, why are we conducting research? For the sake of saying we have done research? For the sake of promotion?

I personally believe that research is conducted to expand the scope of knowledge. Which to me boils down to a basic question when it comes to furnishing the findings – so what? Because if we can’t answer the so what question (as in, these are my results, so what?), then maybe the time spent on the project is time better spent elsewhere. Research must not be about reinventing the wheel. If someone has done it before, then copying the person’s methodology, technique and arguments without adding a new approach, a new theory or a new finding is not good enough, especially if you already have a PhD under your belt. Slapping the phrase: ‘A Malaysian Context’ at the end of a paper that is, by and large, someone else’s methodology, literature review and equations, is a tired, tired game. So are studies that are nothing more than questionnaire answers run through SPSS. There needs to be expansion.

There also needs to be focus. Not every university can be a research university. That’s fine, because some lecturers are not cut out to be researchers, in the same way some researchers are not cut out to be lecturers. So there has to be a decision that needs to be made: is the university a teaching university, or is it a research university? Going back to the earlier point, this needs to be clearly defined, so that decisions and investments can be shaped likewise. Performance criteria, promotions and remuneration have to reflect this. Expecting a university lecturer posted at a university in the middle of a Felda plantation to furnish exceptional research findings while being saddled with 16 teaching hours a week is madness. Trying to be a jack of all trades leaves you a master of none – and therefore sorely lacking the expert status you so crave others to laud you with.

And for all the investment that is being put in, the output must be visible. Malaysia has a very workable grant system; known in academic circles as the IRPA grant, but once awarded this money, where does it go to? Do you really need to book a five day trip to Langkawi – on research funds – as a retreat to get your creative juices running? Does every team member need a PDA or a laser printer – also bought using grant money? There must be accountability, and there must be a system that allows transparency when it comes to assessing the output of the projects funded by these grants. Projects that merely reinvent the wheel, for instance, should never receive funding in the first place.

All in all, when it comes to research, universities have to be serious about the aim of it all: we do research not because we want to be seen to be doing research, but because we want to add to knowledge. We want to find something new, observe something that has not yet been observed or innovate. The wheel has been around for many a millennia, it is round, it rolls and it makes things move. Enough already.

B. Aiming down a blind alley

A university I was associated with once had the noble ambition of wanting to be “one of the world’s top universities”. This notion, this idea, was often pushed forward to staff and students alike, and this was often met with giggles, and not just from the back row. Sure, in the spirit of Malaysia Boleh and all its kindred spirits, this idea was not farfetched, but what it was, was vague.

Basic theories of goal and target setting hold that in order for people to achieve a target or surpass it, it must be internalised. In order for a goal to be internalised, it has to be realistic; tangible, something within reach. Researchers in the late 1960′s and 1970′s, among them notable organisational culture expert Geert Hofstede, found, that in order for targets to be achieved, they must be set at a level that was not too easy, but not too difficult; and that clearer goals are better attained, and vagueness decreases motivational power of the targets.

So, noble as it is that we want to be one of the world’s top university, do we know what it takes to achieve such a target? Do we have a game plan to be the nation’s top university? Is this reflected in the overall strategy of the university, in our recruitment policy of both students and staff, and in the investment decisions that it makes? Do we have clear performance indicators that staff and students can relate to? Because if we don’t, a vague ideal is all that there is, and as output, we’ll always get giggles in the back row. At best.

C. Less politics, please, we’re intellectuals.

Idealistic child that I was, I thought that life at university would be immune to political pressures. The whole untouchable, ivory towers concept.. that of intellectual minds being above and beyond trivial details of daily life. OK, maybe not that out of touch with reality, but at least, a freedom to exercise thought without external pressures sullying the sanctity of knowledge. It seems, though, these days, that in Malaysian academia, freedom of thought is constrained within a framework of undying support for all that is governmental; and that looks dangerous.

If anything, a university is where thinking should be allowed. Take this away, and you’re producing drones, no better than the next drone down the aisle. Not only staff should be allowed to think, but students too. The prosecution of many a student for being sympathetic with opposition parties – be it in the campus elections or otherwise – is worrying. Perhaps it has escaped many of us – myself included, sometimes – but opposition parties are part and parcel of a democratic government; it is what makes the parliament system works; it is what restores the check and balance of things. In short, opposition parties are also part of the government – why must it be that those with leanings towards these factions are treated as if they are traitors to the nation, denied selected rights and privileges?

Universities are not the place to prosecute students for thinking. By doing this you are encouraging apathy; and if its apathy you’re encouraging, why bother asking why young progressive professionals don’t vote?

Universities are supposed to be a place where ideas come alive; where the status quo is prodded and poked to maintain its integrity; where intuition becomes theory; where the proliferation of thought should be done freely. If universities in Malaysia can’t even live up to these basic standards and ideals, then maybe worrying about where we rank should be the least of our worries.

The Times Higher Education Supplement (THES) recently released its 2005 World Universities ranking, and already, the Malaysian press are asking questions : why did Universiti Malaya (UM), ranked 89th in the world in 2004, slip to 169th this year? The ink had perhaps not yet dried on the new letterheads that showcased this top 100th effort – no mean feat for a university in a developing country – and now, all are up in arms at the slip that many seem to feel looks like one place too many.

On the one hand, ranked 169th in the world is not a bad position to be in. Even Lancaster University, which proudly boasts of its 6* business school status, didn’t make the list – other notable UK absentees include Southampton, LBS and Cardiff – each quite well known in certain fields, but perhaps not good enough overall.

Rankings, it should be said, aren’t the be all and end all of universities; if anything, most of the time they are to be ignored. Of course, it stands to be a very good selling point if you are ranked in the top 10, but even if you don’t make the shortlist, taking these universities out of the equation when considering a reasonable place to study is very unwise.

David Otley, reknowned professor in performance measurement, once said that whenever you see a list that shows performance, the first question you must ask is, what measurement technique were used. What were the criteria, what scoring system was employed, and how were these weighted. For instance, had the weightings on some criteria changed, would the rankings have turned out differently?

So the most obvious place to look at, for starters, is what made up the scores. In the case of the 2005 rankings, 40% weighting was due to peer review, 10% recruiter review, 5% international faculty, 5% international students, 20% faculty/student score and 20% citations/faculty score. Already, based on this alone, potentially 50% of the scores could be swayed by the old boys network: that is, namely, peer review and recruiter review – with no disrepect to the respondents of the survey itself, of course.

Now, let’s see where UM could have gone wrong. In terms of recommendations from peers, one could argue that academicians are professional enough to ignore scandals such as the Edmund Terence Gomez issue when considering expertise, but when it comes to graduate recruitment, employers’ preference for overseas graduates – even those attending universities well outside the world top 200 – sends signals in varying directions. Are local universities seen to be of a lower standing by employers? If so, then why? Are we still suffering from the ‘Kasut Gombak’ syndrome, lacking confidence in our own abilities? Of course the other option is that local university graduates are below par, but I refuse to accept this, and I believe many local graduates will agree that just because they chose to study ‘at home’ should not make them any less employable. And yet, as the Star attests, UM scored 0/100 in the graduate employer survey. Why?

International faculty and international student scores – constituting 10% of the final score, is also potentially an area Malaysian universities would score low in, apart from say, IIUM. I would argue that a major impediment to having employees and students from abroad coming to study at IPTAs would be language. They seem ready to attend or obtain jobs private universities that use English as a medium of instruction. Of course, this opens a new can of worms; what with the whole sovereignity of the national language allegedly at stake. Without wanting to incite prolonged debate on the issue, arguably Bahasa is no longer the lingua-franca it was 500 years ago; and to expect it to regain its dominance so much so that people would flock to our universities despite the language barrier is bordering on the far side of foolishness. Proud as I am of my mother tongue, it still needs to be said – and accepted – that we no longer are an Asian superpower when it comes to language, unlike in the days of the Melaka Sultanate, and the sooner we act like it, the faster we can move forward.

So, what say the powers that be? UM Vice Chancellor Hashim Yaacob seems somewhat nonchalant about the situation, much to the consternation of opposition leader Lim Kit Siang, among others, who called for the VC to be sacked. Adham Baba, the Parliament Secretary at the Ministry of Higher Education, argued that it was due to age : that UM was a ‘much younger’ university compared to the others, and somehow he expects us to believe that this was partly the cause. A random check on the universities ranked higher than UM (ranked 169th, est. 1949) in the list yielded the following results when it came to age: Queensland University of Technology, Australia (ranked 109th, established 1989), Monash (33rd, est. 1958), Nanyang Technological University (49th, est. 1951), broadly suggesting that while, in the context of the world’s major universities such as Oxford, Cambridge and Harvard, age does matter; when it comes to universities that are similar in age and region to us, we are still sorely lagging behind.

So, what now, UM, and indeed, all Malaysian universities, for that matter? On the one hand I would argue that rankings add to marketability, but should not be obsessed about. Different weightings, complicated algorithms and scoring methods all do away the benefits of knowing exactly where one stands, especially when the largest component of evaluation is subjective in nature. Any half baked researcher – self included – could tell you that bias is a major issue when it comes to surveys and opinions, and must be taken with a pinch of salt. How big that pinch is, however, is left up to the pincher.

On the other hand, academia in Malaysia isn’t what it was in the 1960′s and the 1970′s; and happenings in the past few years, last year most obviously, seem to suggest a downward spiral. Part 2 of this piece will outline some suggestions about what could be done to stop the rot.