ACADEMIC excellence is the sine quo non of a great university. Without academic excellence public universities are like factories producing half-baked products hazardous to any user. A university education without quality is a life-time defective investment, a waste of scarce public funds that gives false hope to the rakyat and it will deprive the nation of the much needed brain power.
Universities are not about buildings and large halls; what counts is the universality of their scholarship. Qualified, open-minded and dedicated teachers with excellent communication skills tend to produce critical minded-students who will make good citizens.
The ambitious economic transformation programmes will come to nought without a versatile, knowledgeable and scalable technical and managerial brain power which the nation expects from public universities. Going by the university ranking index, the performance of our public universities is disappointing. None of the 21 public funded universities were among the top 100 since 2004.
Prejudices aside, Times Higher Education (THE) and Quacquarelli and Symonds (QS) World University are widely recognised as rating agencies for assessing scholarship or academic excellence. The same criteria (peer review, recruiter review, citations, student/staff ratio and international staff) for ranking the top universities are also used to grade universities in Malaysia. To dispute our position and yet accept their ranking for Harvard, MIT, Yale, Oxford and Cambridge sounds like sour grapes.
We live in a world of opinion polls where perception indices matter. I am a bit perplexed by our expectation: on the one hand, we seem to have embraced their findings, albeit in some cases, reluctantly. But when it comes to THE and QS ranking index, some people are angry. Are they angry with the criteria or because outsiders have exposed the poor quality of scholarship in our universities?
The lack-lustre performance of our universities is symptomatic of a larger structural problem.
According to some analysts the standard of academic excellence began to decline since 1971 following the decision to use Malay as the medium of instruction as recommended in the 1956 Razak Report.
Those who have read the Razak Report (Report of the Education Committee, 1956) are familiar with the recommendation to make the national language as the medium of instruction in schools. Conveniently forgotten is the recommendation in para 71 which says "we recommend that the study of the Malayan national language and that of the English language shall be compulsory. The reason for the study of the Malay language is the intention ... to make Malay the national language of the country. The reason for teaching English is that we desire that no secondary school pupil shall be at a disadvantage in the matter either of employment or of higher education in Malaya or overseas as long as it is necessary to use the English language for these purposes."
Had our politicians and policymakers insisted on the mandatory use of English in our schools, the quality of academic scholarship in our public universities would most likely remain respectably high. This point was highlighted in a World Bank Report (2007) on higher education in Malaysia ("Malaysia and the Knowledge Economy: Building a World-Class Higher Education System"). The consequence of not embracing international standards (like using English) in our education system has, in the opinion of the report, been detrimental to our economy. It also affects diplomacy, international trade and access to global minds.
The report says, among other things, that to sustain its competitive edge Malaysia needs a world class education system that provides knowledge-based manpower to propel the country into an innovative economy. It reiterates the need to improve "the overall effectiveness of the university and national innovation system". The report chided our schools and universities for failing to effectively deliver knowledge and they need to buck up.
Some 50,000 graduates were not employed in 2004, according to the report, because of skills mismatch -meaning public universities did not prepare their graduates well for the job market. Suggestions in the report for universities to introduce soft skills in the curricula are veiled language, implying failure to produce students with relevant transferable skills and relevant knowledge.
The report also finds graduates of public universities lacking in effective communication skills to take advantage of global job opportunities. Of course, it is understood that the purpose of higher education is much greater than preparing students for jobs.
The report also calls on policymakers to focus more on monitoring and evaluation of their policy education outputs than "has been hitherto the case in Malaysia". Deciphered, it means our schools and universities are miles behind the best in the region. The university ranking index has acknowledged this assertion.
The report says the decline in the education quality has affected Malaysia’s economic attractiveness in the region. In 2007, for example, the World Economic Forum ranked Malaysia 24th on Growth Economic Index and 23rd on Business Competitiveness Index among 116 countries. Although Malaysia was ahead of the Philippines and Thailand in both indices, it was placed below South Korea and Singapore.
In terms of innovation, which measures creativity, Malaysia was ranked 60th on UNCTAD’s World Investment Report. Malaysia was rated higher than China and India but behind Thailand, Taiwan, South Korea, Singapore and Japan. These countries (except Thailand) were ahead of Malaysia in terms of the number of patents registered with the US Patent and Trade mark Office. For 2001-2005, Malaysia registered 49 patents compared with 11,152 for Korea and 795 for Singapore. In 2004, MIT generated 133 patents.
Malaysia was also behind these economies in terms of the number of researchers per million people; Malaysia (294), Korea (2,979), Singapore (4,532) and China (633). Malaysia also spends less than these economies for R&D as a percentage of GDP. The figure for Malaysia for 2002 was 0.69%; Korea 2.53%, Singapore 2.15%, China 1.2% and Japan 3.12%. There is plenty of catching up to do for Malaysia to remain in the league.
The World Bank Report further reiterated that "Malaysia’s quest to become a sophisticated knowledge-based economy is likely to be frustrated, unless policies to link Malaysian firms with universities and research institutes are strengthened." Though a mouthful it begs a pressing question. Except in very few cases, research by multinationals are firm-specific and they do not always contribute to local needs.
The report also suggested that "to compete economically Malaysia needs to integrate science, engineering and technology knowledge into the production process." The policy that Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad introduced to use English to teach maths and science in schools was primarily aimed at expediting the transition process from the current economic mode to an innovative economic model. Unfortunately, the current government has abandoned this policy. This policy change is likely to delay Malaysia achieving the innovative economic mode.
To move forward with confidence Malaysia needs to embrace academic excellence from primary school to university level and align the national educational policy with the international standards and adopt at the same time the international best practices in education.
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