Oftentimes these days, we ordinary Malaysians get the feeling that our politicians and even religious heads are living in a parallel universe.

We will leave aside from today’s discussion the muftis from Perak and Pahang and similar ‘jadong’ robed personalities who profess to be religious, simply because there is just too much to say about them.

And not much that’s nice. So, we’ll save them for another day.

Instead, at a time when we hear that cuts are being made left, right and centre in the Malaysian education sector, let’s turn to the comments of one of the politicians in charge.

In April 2015, the Education Minister, Idris Jusoh, reportedly boasted that “public universities in the country can be among the world’s best in future on par with Oxford University”.

More recently, the man’s speech writer apparently rehashed this line, with Idris reiterating that “The way we are soaring upwards, I believe in 20 to 30 years, we will be able to stand alongside the likes of Oxford, Cambridge and Harvard”.

“Soaring upwards”? That must have been some potent weed these guys were smoking.

Fact is, two of these public universities the minister must have been alluding to have been embroiled in enough controversy over the past couple of years that reflects a sector that is diving headlong downwards rather than soaring upwards.

One, Universiti Teknologi Mara (UiTM), has been in the headlines for the wrong reasons, first for organising a seminar that many have alleged attacked Christians and Christianity. The ensuing, obligatory ‘investigation’ by the ministry, not surprisingly, yielded nothing incriminating.

Second, this same university more recently was caught for mistakenly - and, I’m sure, innocently - stamping their logo on a number of theses from a British university, allegedly claiming credit for theses researched in other universities.

Here, too, internal investigations ‘discovered’ that it was actually nothing more than a ‘stamping’ error.

But, the bottom line is that both incidents cast a dark shadow over a university that has already been criticised by quite a few for its policies.

Roots of such unethical behaviour

The second university, arguably Malaysia’s premier public university, Universiti Malaya (UM), was caught out recently by international academics for having a couple or more of its academic staff publishing fraudulent research findings in high impact, peer-reviewed journals. Not just in one journal but in a number of journals.

While the easy way out, of course, was to quietly punish the staff, the roots of such unethical behaviour evidently have escaped the attention of those responsible - the university and ministry ‘leaders’.

Indeed, when clear cases of fraud have been exposed, often they are either brushed aside by the authorities or hushed up.

Like the social science ‘Datin’ in UM who blatantly plagiarised a student’s hard work and was excused; like the celebrity professor who plagiarised his PhD thesis on Malaysian film; like the bigoted preacher and columnist who plagiarised a colleague’s exercise, and, when exposed, moved on to a university in Terengganu, then granted a professorship, and now continues to spew his hate and bigotry.

It is gratifying then (and certainly ironic) that, just when we get politicians boasting about where we are - and where we will ‘soar’ to - we also have concerned academics wanting to address this problem and seriously seek solutions.

At the recent 10th Malaysian Studies International Conference in Sabah, the Malaysian Social Science Association (MSSA/PSSM), tried to begin do just that.

In a final open plenary on academic integrity and standards, these issues were raised, primarily by the younger academics in attendance.

Two main issues were posed. First was the alleged trend of senior academics exploiting the younger ones, and even their students, demanding that their names be put on research papers even though they had little to do with the research and writing.

Indeed, at the Sabah conference alone, there were senior academics who had three and more joint papers with others who were clearly their research students. Not surprisingly, these academics remained silent.

One silly German professor tried to make light of, and even excuse, this practice by suggesting that when academics repeat their lectures year in and year out, they are basically plagiarising.

But, overall, the academics who spoke - and perhaps the majority in attendance - clearly were aware that there are very real problems affecting Malaysian academia. The solutions are not going to be easy, especially within a wider environment lacking in integrity and standards

Nevertheless, there was - and there continues an attempt to address these problems openly.

Theirs was - is - a concern derived from everyday experiences in the very real world of Malaysian academia.

Experiences which, quite clearly, belie the boasts and cow manure of those politicians evidently living in a different, drugged-out universe.

ROM NAIN is a media analyst and academic who is weary of incompetent, unethical leaders and their apologists and spin doctors in the media who try to get away with murder while professing to rub shoulders with God’s angels.