Symposia 2: The Higher Education Blueprint Whats Missing?

27 June 2015

Speakers:

Dr Tan Ai Mei has been a teacher educator in a Malaysian Teacher Education

Institute for more than 13 years. Her PhD in Policy Analysis and Higher Education
Planning from University of Western Australia led to the publication of a book,
Malaysian Private Higher Education: Globalisation, Privatisation and Transformation
towards Marketplaces, in 2002, which was translated a decade later in 2012 by
academics from Guangxi University in China. In all, she has researched and
published five books pertaining to education development in Malaysia, and has
been awarded the position of outstanding senior teacher educator by the Malaysian
Ministry of Education. In addition, she was appointed as panel assessor by the
prestigious Malaysian Quality Agency (MQA) to oversee and to ensure that
development of Malaysian private higher education institutions is of quality.

Dr Chong Kok Boon is a physicist specialising in condensed matter and currently

affiliated with a private higher education institution in Malaysia. Boon completed his
PhD at Queen Mary University of London, and worked at a few universities in the UK
prior to relocating back to Malaysia. He is involved in a number of international
consortium projects in nuclear energy research. Boon was an ambassador to
promote STEM in the UK, and was a syllabus adviser for primary and secondary
schools in London. He voluntarily promotes STEM in schools in Malaysia. Recently,
the Ministry of Education of Chongqing, China, appointed him as an overseas expert
to help Chongqing SAR in R&D development, especially in human capital training.
Observing the deterioration of higher education in Malaysia, Boon is committed to
reforming the local academic profession for the younger generations.

Dr Geoffrey Williams is Founder and Director of the Academy of Responsible

Management Sdn Bhd. He was formerly Deputy Vice Chancellor of Universiti Tun
Abdul Razak (UNIRAZAK), Professor in the Graduate School of Business and Director
of the Centre for Executive Education (CEE). An economist by background, Geoffrey
is a graduate of the University of Cambridge and has held academic positions at
London Business School, Pembroke College University of Oxford and the Universities
of London, and Nottingham where he was Director of Research and Director of the
PhD Programme in the Business School at the Malaysia Campus. He was elected
Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts (RSA) in 2004 and Fellow of the Malaysian
Institute of Management (MIM) in 2010. He is currently a Visiting Fellow at the
Penang Institute, Malaysia and a member of the Advisory Board of the Faculty of
Industrial Management at University Malaysia Pahang (UMP). He was Deputy
Chairman of EUMCCI (2012-14) and is currently chair of the Education and CSR
Committees. He has held a range of commercial consultancies and also advisory
roles with the UK Government and the European Union as well as government
departments and agencies in Malaysia.

Dr Edmund Terence Gomez is Professor of Political Economy at the Faculty of

Economics & Administration, University of Malaya. He has held appointments at the
University of Leeds (UK) and Murdoch University (Australia) and served as Visiting
Professor at Kobe University, Japan and at the Universities of Michigan (Ann Arbor)
and California (San Diego) (USA). Between 2005 and 2008, he served as Research
Coordinator at the United Nations Research Institute for Social Development
(UNRISD), in Geneva, Switzerland. Other academic appointments include Visiting
Fellowships at the Australian National University and at the Nordic Institute of Asian
Studies, Denmark. His recent international book publications include The New
Economic Policy in Malaysia: Affirmative Action, Horizontal Inequalities and Social
Justice (National University of Singapore Press, 2013), Affirmative Action, Ethnicity
and Conflict (Routledge, 2013), Belonging to the Nation: Generational Change,
Identity and the Chinese Diaspora (Routledge, 2015) and Government-Linked
Companies and Sustainable, Equitable Development (Routledge, 2015).

Moderator
Dr Alicia Izharuddin is an academic and newspaper columnist in Kuala Lumpur.
She has published in Indonesia and the Malay World, Inter-Asia Cultural Studies,
essays and shorter articles in numerous local and international media publications.

Discussion

Dr Tan Ai Mei discussed the impact of the Higher Education Blueprint on the
sustainability of Malaysian higher education development. The Blueprint is very well
written and its targets are very clear. She talked the audience through its four goals,
and issues raised by them:

1) Holistic, entrepreneurial and balanced graduates. How to promote social

cohesiveness? As unemployment rises, a first degree is not enough people
go for an MA and a PhD. Does this meet the goal of higher education?
2) Higher Learning Talent Excellence. Bahasa Malaysia has overtaken English as
the medium does this help?
3) Nation of Lifelong Learners. The aim here is to upgrade employees. Lifelong
Learning should cut across all ages in order to better society.
4) Quality TVET (Technical Vocational Educational Training) graduates. The MARA
model involves twinning with universities in Germany, Japan, UK etc. Having
13 branches, do the graduates nowadays compare to the old days?

The government gave six means to achieve the four goals, raising the following
points:

Innovation ecosystem, to link with industry. Can commercialization help?

How to achieve goal of 2.5 million people in higher education?
 Solving the governments problem is not necessarily the same as solving the
countrys problems.
Roles of higher education in this globalised world: student needs are mobility,
employability and sustainability. Not only workers, but also leaders and
specialists, are needed.

Dr Tan made reference to the inclusive wealth index: natural capital as well as
human capital, with consideration given to the environment and ecosystem. She
also discussed the US model, in which 40% of the curriculum is grounded in liberal
arts, enabling students to see things from a bigger perspective. This places higher
education as a community builder.

Dr Chong stated that the aims of the Blueprint cannot be achieved unless laws on
academic freedom are fixed, and that here in Malaysia there is almost no academic
freedom. He gave the example of Azmi Sharom: how can a law professor be charged
just for giving legal opinions? Dr Chong referenced Michael Polanyi, who argued that
academic freedom is a fundamental necessity for the production of true knowledge.
Political interference occurs in Malaysia every day, and also affects the progress of
developments in research. Academic freedom must include being able to express
opinions on the academic system. Academics should be encouraged to be involved
in professional bodies and trade unions. Instead, we see demotions and sidelining of
academics who do not toe the line.

Dr Chong also noted that students should be involved in the development and
planning of the university, because they are the stakeholders. If they are not
allowed to voice their opinions, how can they become future leaders? Furthermore,
he expressed concerns about the quality of teaching: when academics dont know
how to do research, they just read from books, and in such a system, the university
cannot advance knowledge. Online learning depends on who is going to teach the
course and how. MQA are supposed to be advisors but they are restricted.
Academics dont have the freedom to decide how to deliver teaching.

Dr Terence Gomez began his presentation by contextualising the Blueprint. The

2008 global financial crisis exposed significant problems with the neoliberal model
of development and its focus on privatisation and deregulation. In Malaysia, the
crisis also exposed inadequate investments in research and development (R&D),
partly due to the poor quality of education. Dr Gomez questioned whether our
students can think, whether they are creative, whether they can even speak
coherently and articulate an argument clearly. He emphasised that there is
something fundamentally wrong with the education system. However, the
Blueprints focus is on serving the needs of business which should not be the role
of the university. He expressed disappointment that the Blueprint did not include a
historical review of why we are where we are today, and with a clear analysis of the
factors contributing to the decline of public institutions.
The Blueprint also contains no discussion about the curriculum. Dr Gomez queried
whether it equips students with the skills needed to function in the fast-paced
modern world. The focus should be on critical knowledge, critical thinking, and
philosophy, but these are completely neglected. When Malaysia decided to
industrialise rapidly, much research funding was moved from social sciences and
humanities to science and technology. These former disciplines must be promoted
also, if critical thinking is to be nurtured. He noted that Singapore is currently
reviewing its curriculum, having realised that it doesnt create students who can
think critically.

During the period of declining industrialisation and the growing importance of the
services sector, the Malaysian government decided that it was time to sell
education, leading to the creation of private universities and public-private
institutions. Furthermore, the government has created a large number of public
universities, completely out of proportion to the people equipped with the expertise
to work in these tertiary institutions. Who are the leaders? This led to the question
of what kind of tutelage is being provided to students entering these tertiary
institutions. Are they well trained, including those in private universities? If poor
quality tutelage is being provided, this is also a serious injustice because young
people are going into high debt for their education.

Dr Gomez also questioned the Blueprints emphasis on the promotion of

entrepreneurship in the universities. He noted that the failure rate for start-ups
anywhere in the world is 70% and up, yet with such an intense focus on business.
He queries why were asking our students to do this.

Dr Gomez noted that even in the USA there is a debate about the role of the public
intellectual. Where are our public intellectuals today? It says something about the
route that our scholarship has taken, an issue not reviewed in the Blueprint.

Dr Williams noted that the Blueprint doesnt really discuss private education
except in mentioning that its intended to take on the lions share of student
enrolment. This is the biggest gap in the document.

Although the Blueprint is very long, Dr Williams encouraged reading it in detail and
reflecting on whats been written, why, and by whom. He found it quite honest, in
that it reveals the fundamental philosophy of Malaysian higher education and the
Ministry of Education: its about how the higher education system will create jobs.

Dr Williams shared some statistics. 27% of private university graduates cant find
jobs after graduation, while among people who have not gone to university,
unemployment is at only 3%. 45% of all graduates in Malaysia in employment are
earning salaries of less than RM1,500 per month. The return on their investment,
especially among graduates of private universities, is terrible. 55% of Malaysian
employers say that poor English is a key reason for their low employability.
Universities are not necessarily delivering the types of graduates that the market
wants.

In terms of governance, Dr Williams noted that the Blueprint is very honest when it
discusses earned autonomy for university senior managers, who apparently need
to earn this right. This is an acknowledgement that right now they dont deserve
autonomy, that the Ministry of Education doesnt think that many senior managers
are up to the task. The Ministry of Education genuinely doesnt want to
micromanage universities; it wants public universities where senior managers can
be relied on to do a good job. Dr Williams questioned therefore who these senior
managers are right now: their backgrounds and training. Have they international
management experience, or just international teaching experience?

It costs almost RM21,000 per year for students in Malaysian public universities. The
Blueprint did not address the selection and incentive structures of the higher
management team.

Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) are not new, and Dr Williams described
them as basically audiovisual textbooks. Courses are recorded and put online. There
is an implicit suggestion in the Blueprint that Malaysian universities need to use
MOOCs that have been created overseas because the material here is not so good.
He cautioned that MOOCs cannot replace formal face-to-face teaching, and that the
Blueprint lacks assessment of the international experience.

Finally, hiring practices for higher education in Malaysia are not opaque. Only the
foreign-branch campuses, Sunway University and the International Islamic
University regularly advertise for faculty.

Dr Gomez noted that architects of the Blueprint include members of the

Opposition, and their orientation is also very neoliberal. They too serve the market.
Where are the dissenting voices? He added that parents today have a very
utilitarian notion about education, and theyre thinking like this because of the
privatisation of education.

Dr Williams stated that the ethnic make-up among staff is mainly Malays (all staff
in public universities), mainly male and aged over 50, meaning that they have no
experience of modern student life or modern learning methods. He underlined that
there is something wrong in the appointment process.

Dr Gomez made reference to the vice chancellor of UM, whose contract was
recently not renewed. He had consistently protected the academic freedom of
faculty. Dr Gomez described the quota system of the past in terms of both student
intake and the hiring system. This led to an influx of lecturers who were just not
good enough, key factors that contributed to institutional decline. It seems
impossible to sack an academic, no matter how bad they are. Or, due process drags
on and meanwhile the dean, vice chancellor, etc are removed.
Good students no longer apply to public universities. Dr Gomez acknowledged that
the middle class knows how to take care of itself they send their children abroad
or pay for private education. As a result, there are hardly any urban middle-class
applicants to public universities, let alone enrolments.

Students cannot be taught in English because their English is so poor. Teaching can
be conducted in BM, but there are international students to be considered also.
Furthermore, not enough English textbooks are translated into BM. So now faculty
members are expected to teach in English, but students do not comprehend.

Dr Chong pointed out the universities in Malaysia do not have planning in talent
recruitment based on the field they are going to expand or venture into. He gave an
example of a university wanting to expand electrical engineering, but they did not
plan which branch of electrical engineering they wanted to focus on, so they simply
got anyone with an electrical background, which wasted resources and did not
achieve the target goal. This linked in with the incompetent academic who clings to
the ladder of management.

An audience member highlighted that surely there are defects in primary and
secondary education, therefore how can creativity suddenly blossom at university?
He called for social integration and meritocracy.

The New Economic Policy was discussed. Dr Lim Teck Ghee said that the NEP
system is not only difficult to reform; its also not transparent, its inscrutable. He
called for mapping of some of the more serious problems and identification of the
controllers of this system.

Dr Gomez described how democracy, when it came to Thailand, Taiwan and

Indonesia, was led by university students during the 1980s and 1990s. Students
were at the forefront of Reformasi. The government was worried; this country then
had a youth bulge. Hence, its need to control who the vice chancellor is, and so on.
But education is a key component of services, and we want to bring in foreign
students. Therefore, Malaysias higher education system needs to compete globally.
Finland, Poland and South Korea went through major reforms and have shot up the
ladder in terms of quality of education. Becoming a teacher in Finland is as tough as
becoming a doctor. They only want the best minds. Dr Gomez questioned whether
we pay our teachers enough to get the best minds.

Dr Williams responded to a question on Malaysias paper-based system, by

explaining that his own university career was 100% exam-based, without even
writing a thesis. He stressed that an individual cannot be properly assessed without
an exam, and the increasing problem of plagiarism can be at least partly addressed
in this way. Learning the skill of crafting well-argued essays within a limited time
frame is also valuable.
Dr Chong questioned the value of outcome-based education in Malaysia as it is too
easy for academics to take advantage of it, diluting the syllabus and delivering
substandard teaching.

Maryam Ramli Lee stated that it is harder to get into university due to the
removal of grants. Fewer people will be able to afford it. She asked how we can talk
of reforming higher education if it is less accessible.

Dr Guido Schnieders stated that they want to expand the number of students
without providing more funding. There are 60,000 international students in Malaysia
(according to numbers from UNESCO), but what of all the Malaysians who go abroad
for their education? What is needed is more exchange. DAAD in Germany focuses
on this as it aids learning.

Dr Williams stated that universities will have to find other sources of non-fee
income, but that students will remain their major source of finance. He made
reference to the British experience of raising fees overnight, which he opposed as it
reduced access. Higher education in the UK now costs 9,000 per year and there
was no lead time for parents to make savings. He said that he does not expect
numbers of international students to increase, because why would they come here?
Students from the Middle East come here not for the quality of education but to
escape their local context. Malaysian universities are segregated and not attractive
places for international students. Western students would be unlikely to be
interested no union bar, and no academic freedom!

Audience member Dr Selvaratnam noted that the 1967 Higher Education

Committee Report called for affirmative action alongside quality, but this was not
implemented. He questioned whether these two components can be mixed.

Dr Gomez noted that affirmative action is the policy that divides this country and
dictates the public agenda, and yet there is no discussion about it in the Blueprint or
the 11th Malaysia Plan. Institutional decline in Malaysia is attributed to this policy,
and the authorities refuse to debate it. He told how Mahathir, Perkasa and then
UMNO all came down upon Najib for opposing the policy, and then he brought out
market-friendly affirmative action. He also recounted how he encountered 120
Malaysian government scholars in Michigan all of whom were the offspring of
politicians and businessmen; none of whom were from a kampong. After 40 years of
the NEP, there is still no benefit for the poorest Bumiputera.

He also questioned why we are fixated with the US and UK models; why not look at
Germany, where higher education is free even for foreign students? The system
here is fundamentally flawed because it doesnt allow good students to move up.
After their undergraduate studies, they cant afford to do Masters as they are
burdened with repaying loans they had obtained to complete their degrees.
Another audience member noted that this is a global issue, because the entire
system is driven by money. This is why the Occupy movement started up worldwide,
initiated by university students.

The session concluded with Dr Williams highlighting the plan to compile a book on
the topic of the Blueprint and its shortcomings, and encouraging potential
contributors to make contact.

The next Symposia session is expected to be in August or September, and need not
be on higher education. Anybody who is interested in facilitating a discussion is
welcome to get in touch and suggest a topic. Please contact
publications@gerakbudaya.com