Our varsities: The good, the bad and the ugly

The TehTarik sessions are the brainchild of a group of young Malaysians at Cambridge University who desired a non-partisan platform to foster open discussion on burning issues. Sessions are open to all as long as they have a shared passion for Malaysia. The following is based on the discussion that took place over a hot cup of self-made teh tarik.

A Malaysian university in the top 100 World University Ranking. That’ll be the day.

In recent years, we have seen the embarrassing deterioration in the world ranking of Malaysian universities. Although ranks and good reputation are not at all conclusive parameters of the quality of universities, they are still insightful indicators.

Instead of occupying ourselves with improving the quality of education of Malaysians, we have been trying to feed the growing demand for university certificates from both the employers and the society by printing more certificates. True to basic economic principles, the result is inflation in the system and the erosion of the value of certificates.

The overarching logic seems to be that by building more universities and producing more graduates of whatever skills; this will automatically increase and enhance ‘human capital’ in Malaysia. Ping. Magic happens: more graduates, more people employed.

But of course, employers are not as easily fooled by the mere flashing of certificates hence the 25 to 33 percent unemployed graduates every year. Shocking? Not at all, once you scrutinise and understand the system.

Many would like to blame affirmative action as a cause for the slipping standards of higher education in Malaysia, maintaining that it has undermined meritocracy in society. The result is the production of graduates with skills that are either not up to standard or a total mismatch to industries.

Many multinational companies have grumped at the additional cost and time they have to expend to retrain graduates before they can be of use.

Simply by increasing the number of entries to universities, we have created ‘bad’ universities and these ‘bad’ universities, although continuing to print pretty certificates on snazzy paper, produce graduates who fail to live up to the standard of what these certificates are supposed to verify.

Let’s tackle some of the problems head on.

A dual pre-university system

We all know about the lack of meritocracy in Malaysia, and that the university entry system is less than fair. Although in principle, Malaysia works on a quota system proportioned by race, in actuality the admissions filter is now placed at the pre-university level instead of at the university entry level.

Malaysia currently runs on a dual pre-university system - matriculation and STPM. Matriculation examinations are suggested to be much easier and with only 10 percent non-bumiputeras.

Anecdotal evidence claims these non-bumiputeras are not at all selected on their academic prowess. This breeds a lot of resentment and anger among many non-bumiputeras who have to take the more difficult STPM examinations and compete for the same university places with those who take matriculation.

The frequently heard debate is that there should be no multiple entrance system. However, looking at the selection systems of universities worldwide, this is certainly not the case. Many universities across the world take students who graduated with STPM, A levels, International Baccalaureate, etc.

The problem is not accepting different qualifications but that matriculation is backdoor racial selection. The argument is not against racial selection – it is the sheer numbers chosen in this way that makes quality suspect.

At the centre of all these problems is the universities themselves. The root of the problem lies in the teaching system. Similar to the problem of selection of university candidates, lecturers are not chosen based on merit but on close connections and networking.

A particularly notorious system is the Skim Latihan Akademik Bumiputra. This is not to say that members of this cohort are of poor quality, but a lack of meritocracy in the selection of teaching staff is certainly cause for concern.

This not only undermines standards, it also causes much frustration among highly qualified lecturers. Many of their contracts are either not renewed or they decide to leave eventually.

In other words, we have inbreeding of low quality academicians, who may exhibit self-doubt and behave defensively, employing politics in the work place to the further detriment of higher learning.

Adverse climate for research

Furthermore, true to the Malaysian zeitgeist, writers of papers that discuss issues openly are in fact ‘punished’. But to be honest, that’s not much of a worry anyway, considering that there are so few channels for those papers to be published in, in the first place; forcing researchers genuine to their cause to have to seek publication overseas. As usual, there is an emphasis on form and not substance of the research. Rather be bad than ugly any time.

Such a culture can only cultivate an adverse climate for research. The lack of citation, peer reviews and published papers are all reasons for the deterioration in rankings of Malaysian universities adding to greater self-doubt.

How do we improve this situation? This is where economics come in handy again: incentives, incentives, incentives.

A key area that needs improvement is the reward system for research and good teaching. For example, points earned by academics for publishing academic papers are equivalent in rank to the points earned for participating in the National Day Parade! Not that there is anything wrong about National Day Parades, but it seems like a slight distortion of our priorities.

That’s not the end of it. It has been said that based on student feedback, at the end of the year lecturers who are rated poorly are given a fully-paid training course at some five-star hotel with their family. And those who are graded well are given a nice pat on the shoulder.

Surely, a strange way to earn a “holiday’ and we are guessing even the most altruistic of angels would feel just the slightest tinge of resentment against those who had earned their way to attend training course.

Learn the language of business

However, the problem is even deeper than that. Even if teaching and research is improved, there is still the issue of language that needs to be tackled. Even though universities now offer the choice between taking examination in English or Bahasa Malaysia, most graduates are still not eloquent in English.

Although Malay is rightfully the language used in the public sector, the medium of communication in business and commercial activities today, let’s face it, is English. Even China has to admit to this so let’s stop kidding ourselves that we can somehow persuade our international trading partners into using Bahasa Malaysia for commerce.

Future generations of students need to know both Bahasa Malaysia and the English language to gain the most from higher education. Further, although urban students may have the opportunity to practice using English through greater exposure to the language, this is not necessarily true in the rural areas.

However, we should not be paralysed by these difficulties. The medium with which higher education is taught needs to include English but in a gradual process, lest irresponsible people make political capital out of a commercial necessity.

The bright side is that Malaysia puts huge emphasis on education, and budgets accordingly. State-funded universities in Malaysia are relatively cheap and therefore more accessible to all Malaysians.

Quality fruits come from good seeds

There is also an increasing emphasis from the government to identify research universities and make efforts to produce students with industrial relevance. In general, therefore one may say that Malaysia is on the right track.

There is absolutely no doubt that quality fruits come from good seeds. A good university can only come into being through vigorous academic meritocracy and intellectual honesty. Where the process of meritocracy is tainted, the consequence must inevitably and inexorably be mediocrity or worse. Such is the science, and we believe no amount of social engineering can alter that.

What is holding us back is fear of the political fallout should the country try to introduce true meritocracy and allow the universities to grow on their own into centres of excellence and productivity, educational centres that become a source of pride to the nation.

Universities that allow too much expression may grow to challenge the status quo and question the policies of the government of the day, surely an uncomfortable situation.

Successive Malaysian governments have used the National Economic Policy as an excuse to justify the present educational policies of the country.

Ironically, as the proportion of the bumiputera population of the country that becomes more educated increases, they increasingly realise how much injustice and damage is being inflicted in their name under such a policy, on the rakyat and the country. And many are realising that some politicians are just taking advantage of the policy.

Need for constant intellectual debate

A discussion on the pros and cons affirmative action is beyond the scope of this article but there are two observations to be made.

Firstly, there are already constitutional rights safe-guarding the special rights of Malays. Secondly, notwithstanding such rights, there are many different creative ways that affirmative actions can take, without making others feel any great sense of marginalisation.

What can we conclude from all these observations? Where academia and politics go their separate paths, they each can serve as a facilitator and a check on each other to the betterment of both. Where universities are there to serve a social engineering role, many things can go wrong, and in the worst-case scenario, may become ultimately irrelevant to the society they are supposed to serve.

This can only be accelerated when politicians and unenlightened academics bury their heads in the sand and dismiss all bad reviews instead of waking up to address criticism.

Only through constant intellectual debate and appropriate follow-up actions can universities in Malaysia avoid becoming ugly factories producing merchandise of questionable quality and relevance.

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SHAWN TAN is the anchor of this TehTarik session. He is currently writing up his PhD thesis and will be rejoining the world shortly. He is particularly fond of a frothy cup of teh tarik, a hearty discourse and his home, Malaysia. TehTarik is an occasional column in Malaysiakini.