MAKING OUR VARSITIES WORLD CLASS
THE appointment of Dr Maszlee Malik as education minister brings much hope to the education system, which needs an overhaul. He has promised that he will see to it that the education system is given a “new life”, where “holistic” will be the keyword.
Among others, he said at a public forum recently, the 20-odd public universities would need to change its way of doing things. For a start, all political appointees by the previous Barisan Nasional government need to relinquish their posts voluntarily to make way for merit-based appointments.
According to Prof Emeritus Datuk Dr Ibrahim Komoo, a senior fellow at Institute for Environment and Development, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, there are three criteria for public universities to achieve excellence — academic leadership, excellent teaching staff and quality students.
Maszlee has given the assurance that under the New Malaysia concept, there will be no political interference in the running of public universities. He says the universities will be given autonomy and freedom to do what they are supposed to do, which is to achieve academic excellence.
Since the success of an organisation is a function of leadership, the appointment of a highly qualified vice-chancellor is a prerequisite to achieve academic excellence.
The person to be appointed must not only have written scholarly works in international journals and published books, but must also have strong leadership qualities to take the university to greater heights. To such a person, nothing is impossible and scholarly achievement is a passion.
The universities must have world-class teaching staff. These are professors who produce original ideas. They are household names with their own books as a source of reference. And when they teach, it is music to the ears.
The third criterion, as pointed out by Dr Ibrahim, is quality students. These are students who meet the stringent entry requirements, like those imposed by the American Ivy League universities.
Of course, it is a tall order for our public universities to achieve the three criteria set by Dr Ibrahim, but it can be done without political interference.
For a start, it is no shame to look at the National University of Singapore as a benchmark. What is it that makes NUS a worldclass university? I believe they have the three criteria.
NUS also uses English as a medium of instruction. Students accepted into NUS pass the Cambridge “A” level or its equivalent.
We need to revert to the old system, which required university entrants to have a pass in the Higher School Certificate using the Cambridge syllabus. This calls for a radical change in the medium of instruction: English, like it used to be in the 1960s.
If that cannot be done, then something needs to be done to enhance students’ English proficiency. Thus far, all efforts have failed to achieve even the minimum requirement, as the medium of instruction in national schools is still Bahasa Malaysia.
For pencinta Bahasa (Bahasa lovers), the medium of instruction is not an issue. Why then are our universities not much nearer to the NUS standard?
Maybe the quality of students who enter universities is an issue as Form Five school leavers can enter university via matriculation and diploma courses.
Universities now go for volume and take in as many students as they can to meet the national agenda.
Why not turn Universiti Malaya, the nation’s oldest, into our Cambridge or Harvard? Take only the best for UM by using Cambridge University’s entrance criteria. Give UM generous grant. And let the medium of instruction be English. In this way, we can attract quality international students to study at UM.
Perhaps that is the way to go, given our limitations.