It's RAE season in the UK, the Research Assessment Exercise. You know, the ranking system against which ambitious heads of departments choose a university for their lowly minions to do their doctoral studies at. Every few years, institutions of higher education are subjected to an assessment of their research output based on subject area, at the end of which a research score currently on a scale of 1-6, is awarded: with 6 signifying excellence in research, and 1 meaning try harder next time.

The beauty of this system, to me, is that the scores aren't given on a university level, but on a departmental level: allowing universities which have traditionally possessed particular expertise in certain areas to shine; although the system does, inevitably, punish the jack of all trades should they be masters of none. Of course, all ranking systems have flaws and areas of manipulability, but the RAE champions a cause I strongly back: the importance of research at universities, and how, really, its research, not teaching, that is the lifeblood of the ivory towers.

The balance between research and teaching has always been a bane for academicians. There are those who prefer solitary confinement in their cramped little rooms, searching and researching for answers to questions so obscure, they could only have been thought of by the person themselves. Then there are those who enjoy human contact and seeing the sparks of understanding in eyes of future scholars; who see teaching as a virtuous vocation and only immerse themselves into research to avoid being massacred by the brutal publish-or-perish policy. Lucky are those who strike a perfect balance of the two.

In terms of global acceptance, research has a higher stature than teaching. University rankings rarely, if ever, ignore measures of research excellence. Quite rightly so, in my most humble of opinions, because many a great civilization of centuries past were built on knowledge and discoveries. The most illuminated periods in history have always been peppered with its great thinkers, noted intellectuals and famed scholars whose names are associated with theorems and ideas that have lived on hundreds of years after their deaths.

Where's the time?

So it got me thinking, (as most things do, sadly), if we had a similar research assessment exercise in Malaysia, I wonder how our local universities would score. If subjected to the same scoring scheme as British universities, how would we fare? A '3', a '4'? Or mere a '2', at best?

In the recent ranking slide of Malaysian universities, which caused much furor late last year, a clear, marked absence in the scores of Malaysian universities was original research cited in top international journals. Now, I can't speak for subject areas outside of my own realm, but in business studies these days. a discipline now offered at almost every university, and then some I honestly can't recall the last time I read a paper written by a Malaysian while tenured at a Malaysian university.

I've read papers written by Malaysians while they were visiting or doing a doctorate elsewhere, but even in key European or Asia-Pacific journals, Malaysian researchers cited are far and few between. As an academician who will ply her trade mostly on local shores, my concern is why?

Would it have anything to do with teaching-research balance, one wonders. I wonder what the average teaching hours are per lecturer. Six? Nine? Twelve? I remember a particular term when my colleagues were saddled with fifteen. That is, fifteen hours of teaching, as in walk into class, talk, confuse young minds, leave. It doesn't include preparation beforehand, assessments, marking ... the works. When you factor all that into the bigger picture, how much time does the average lecturer have for research?

And yet the irony is, some institutions don't factor in student evaluation into the lecturer's evaluation: instead scoring them on research, (which they have little time to do), publishing in top local or international journals (pretty much impossible given time allocation); and 'community service' how active is said lecturer in the various staff-related societies that have been established; whether said lecturer is undertaking key administration roles such as secretariats for conferences organised by the university ... that kind of stuff. I have seen people being penalised for not 'doing enough for the community' despite being excellent educators.

Is it just the money?

Basic tenet of performance management: you get what you measure. On some level the system works: you want good research, so you reward them for coming up with good research. But if you don't give them time to do this, and then fail to reward them for good performance on what their job occupies them with mostly, what signals are the employers sending? Meh sini (C'mere), employ me as your performance management consultant; I'll sort you out. Grab me now, pre-doctorate, when my rates are much cheaper.

A friend of mine pointed out that teaching hours at the level we were once given was unavoidable. Universities have a social agenda too the government wants more people with some form of post-secondary education, and this means more people at college and university. Given the fixed number of classrooms and lecture halls in the short term and fixed manpower, more hours are definitely in store.

Which makes lecturing, to an extent, an overpaid teaching job. You are doing the same as your counterparts are doing at school level: teaching, marking, taking students on school trips, but you get a nice comfy air-conditioned room, and a fatter paycheck. Correct me if I'm wrong, but academia is more than that, is it not?

A potential solution? I offer this - specialisation. Why not roof all your bright research sparks at a dedicated research institution. Perhaps that institution could offer mostly or wholly postgraduate courses, where students need less contact hours thereby freeing time for research for the academic staff, and within that, providing a research environment that would encourage and enrich the whole academic community.

Sure, there are some of us who are in academia more for the teaching than the research fine. There are almost twenty local universities they can ply their trade at. But what about those of us who are raring to go wanting to discover new knowledge, test new theories and improving old processes? They too need space to develop: are we, as a country, giving them that?

The saddest thing

Money, too, is often an issue. To conduct top notch research, you need top notch funds. From the government, from the private sector, regardless. I've heard noted officials say, we can't compete with the likes of the Harvards and Stanfords of the world, because our funding is limited. I say, we have the funds they are just misdirected.

Friends of mine have worked on government funded research projects, under schemes such as IRPA, who wave their new PDAs under my nose, manuals of which freshly printed on the latest HP Laserjet. "Mana dapat (Where did you get it)?" I ask. "Peruntukan projek IRPA jabatan aku. Next week ada project meeting kat Langkawi, nak ikut? Bilik free. (My department's IRPA project budget. We are off to Langkawi for a project meeting next week, do you want to tag along? The room is paid for)," came the reply. Pray tell, who audits these grants?

Would the project fail if every researcher used pen and paper instead of stylus and screen, and would the output be less credible if the department meeting room was used instead of some island resort somewhere? Get what I mean by misdirected?

A top management school in Britain, I am told, only pays for one staff retreat a year. ONE. And that, not outside a radius of 50 miles of the university itself. No stately mansion stays, the professors conduct their research meetings in the coffee room. Let's not even get started on the over-majestic buildings that house some institutions of higher learning. Have you see the state of the buildings that house the best research schools in other countries?

Never for a moment have I thought that we don't have the best minds in Malaysia. We have many research students abroad, plying their trade and gaining research experience. Large budgets are allocated to polish these minds, to send them abroad so that they return with added skills and abilities, transferring knowledge from the first world to the third.

On the one hand, I feel that it is only right that these minds are contracted to the bodies that paid for their research, because that way, there is assurance that nine times out of ten, they will return, plugging the brain drain to a certain extent. But on the other hand, I feel sad, because what happens to these minds once they return? I'd rather see them abroad, but utilized, than back home, but in the deep freeze.

Because you know, the saddest thing about these great intellects isn't that they don't come home and help 'build the country'. The saddest thing is that they come home expecting to build the country, but end up letting their gifts go to waste.

IDLAN ZAKARIA apologises to the whole literary fraternity because this week, she foregoed the option to buy more arty-farty translated-from-foreign-languages works of impeccable quality for the Match of the Day Guide to the World Cup. If you're interested in joining in or learning more about her Chit Chat Bola project, email her at idlan@idlanzakaria.com