Syed Farid Alattas says the real problems lie in poor administration run by inefficient staff.
A Malaysian professor of sociology in Singapore left no stone unturned when asked about the status of universities in the country. The real problems confronting local institutions, in the eyes of prominent academic Syed Farid Alattas, lie in poor administration run by inefficient staff. These include lack of autonomy for university administrators and hiring of staff and professors without proper credentials, which all lead to poor standards, he said. The immediate remedy to this problem, he added, is a total revamp of the university system, which includes replacing all the vice-chancellors.  Other remedies, he offered, include introducing a system of tenure and rewards for deserving professors, and curriculum reviews.
Syed Farid (left), who teaches at the National University of Singapore (NUS), said if local institutions are not prepared for an overhaul, they would never be ready no matter how long it takes. “Because once you start initiating a new system, heads will roll, people will lose their jobs, they will be stuck, they will not be promoted because they do not deserve promotion. People will be angry,” he said in an interview with Malaysiakini. “Of course, we do not want to fire people and disturb people's ability to make a living, but slowly we have to introduce a system where the right people are promoted and rewarded and those who are not, will not be promoted. Slowly we need to weed out the deadwood,” he added.
Syed Farid was responding to the ranking of public higher learning institutions in Malaysia, which have suffered in the past to the point of dropping out of the top 200 universities in the QS World University Rankings last year. Syed Farid was in Penang recently and participated as a speaker at the International conference on 'Decolonising Our Universities', organised by Universiti Sains Malaysia and Citizens International. The three-day conference heard various papers presented by top-notch academics in the region, from Iran to China, on the topics of decolonisation - Western emphasis on knowledge - in various aspects, especially university education. 'Two tier problem in Malaysian varsities' Syed Farid went on to say that Malaysian universities have a two-tier problem - they have not dealt with the issue of decolonisation and worse still, low standards. He said there has to be strong directives from the (Higher Education) Ministry that standards must be maintained and then, allow the university administrators to do their jobs. But why isn't this happening?  Syed Farid said that one can only speculate that in various sectors, not only education, the government has not been performing as efficiently as it should.
The more conspiratorial theories, he added, would suggest that the government is not really keen in developing education because it has to deal with the intellectual class, who are independent-minded and critical of policies. Asked if a change of leadership in Putrajaya would address the deteriorating state of Malaysian education, Syed Farid said this would merely be a response to the problem. “Whether they (a new government) would be able to do things differently was another matter,” he added. On whether there was still a chance for the government to initiate internal reforms, Syed Farid said he was rather pessimistic about it. “From within Umno and Barisan Nasional, the entrenched interests are too strong. I do not think they have the right people in the bureaucracy, or in the civil service,” he said. “We need a total overhaul. We really need a competent civil service, which will remain regardless of who is the government,” he added. On the question of racial quota, Syed Farid said Malaysia was facing a “dangerous trend” where eventually the best universities would be private and foreign. “We have the worst of all worlds. Standards have deteriorated, our graduates are not articulate in any language,” he said. 'Education seen as purely functional' “Education is not seen as an end in itself, it is seen as something purely functional. But even then, if it is purely functional, it should be of high standards, which we don't have,” he added. On the issue of eurocentrism, Syed Farid cited his own personal experience where he had studied in an American university and now teaches in Singapore, a eurocentric university, “if you will”. But he is conscious of the problem, he says. “At least I know my students are getting a decent education in terms of academic standards. I have the freedom in NUS to talk about eurocentrism or decolonisation of the mind. I am not restricted from doing that,” he added. “There is non-interference from the government, that there is an academic freedom to talk about eurocentrism and other kinds of biasness, for example, there is a male bias in universities as well, not just the problem of eurocentrism,” he stressed. In Malaysia, however, several restrictions on freedom of expression are placed on academics and students, the most obvious being the Universities and University Colleges Act and 'Aku Janji' (I pledge) which prevents the community from political participation. Syed Farid said that academic restriction is not an Islamic tradition although it happens in a Muslim country like Malaysia. “In this sense, the problem is not due to eurocentrism, in European and American universities, there is freedom of expression. So it can be good to be eurocentric in this way,” he quipped. |
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