COMMENT Harith Ahmad, scholar, scientist and a distinguished professor, thinks that it is the lack of racial harmony that prevents Malaysia from taking the lead in the development of science and technology. Given the racial considerations in the realm of public policy, innovations and inventions are never top priority.
 
I think he was quite mild in his criticisms of the Malaysian political and social system. He did not go into the details as this would have been very unpleasant to himself as an academic and scholar.
 
But nonetheless, it is not very often that Malay intellectuals like him who are associated with public universities to criticise the system. We must thank him for his bold and well-placed critique as to why science and technology remains in its infancy in Malaysia.
 
Over the years, a number of public and private universities and colleges have been set up in the country to mass produce graduates to fill in the employment spaces of the rapidly expanding economy.
 
Lecturers and students have been sent overseas to obtain their masters and doctoral degrees later to take up academic positions.

However, the quantitative expansion of the higher educational system has meant nothing to the overall qualitative development of the Malaysian educational system.
 
Public universities and colleges that were set up sought merely to give job opportunities for bumiputera students as well as to lecturers, professors and so on.

Sad to say the overwhelming focus to provide job opportunities have created a crisis of sort for public universities.
 
Contrary to the statement by the Education Minister II, Idris Jusoh (left), our public universities are not even on par with some Asian universities, let alone compete with the good ones in Europe, UK and USA.

But the minister seems to dismiss that universities in Malaysia are second or third rate.
 
He lacks the intellectual ability to distinguish between good and bad ones, and linking foreign student intake to super-quality education is plain stupidity.

In fact, many foreign students who come to Malaysia from places Nigeria, Indonesia, Middle-East and China merely to facilitate their subsequent travel to the developed countries.
 
Non-Malays have little chance of promotion in public universities; position like vice-chancellor, deputies, deans and heads of departments are beyond the reach of non-Malays. Given this racial marginalisation, non-Malays have lost their interest in seeking employment in public universities.
 
Serious malaise

Decadency and serious malaise have set in public universities. Some universities think that by mass producing students with first class honours think that they can be on par with the ones in developed countries.
 
The famous philosopher Karl Polanyi once said that extremisms of one kind or another will be checked by society when it counteracts. Thus, if our public universities are simply going to produce graduates with too many of them getting first class honours, then societies will contract by devaluing these degrees or attainments.
 
The promotion of lecturers to senior lecturers, senior lecturers to associate professors and associate professors to professors is a joke in universities.
 
It is perfectly possible for the teaching staff to be promoted to positions not on academic merits or scholarly publications, but based on their loyalty to higher-ups in universities and those who wield political power.
 
Harith Ahmad is an excellent scholar and who dares to speak out. How many scholars in Malaysia are willing to speak out?

Why the “esteemed” members of the Council of Professors are silent on the sad plight of public universities. Are they just performing the ‘yes-man’ role?
 
It is high-time that the government takes a serious look at what ails the system of higher education in the country.
 

P RAMASAMY is deputy chief minister of Penang.