Welcome to the ‘multiversity’

MANY academicians were disappointed when Higher Education Minister Datuk Seri Mohamed Khaled Nordin announced that the unity government will not touch the Universities and University Colleges Act 1971 (UUCA).

According to him, as I understand it, the ministry will tweak the Act a little here and a little there according to its needs.

To many concerned students, civil society organisations and good academicians, it is a step backwards from restoring academic freedom and power to students with the possibility of removing this authoritarian law that has created a totalitarian regime-type of university education that is already almost half a century old.

Five years ago, I would have scowled at the announcement, but today, after a global pandemic, I just smiled with the knowledge that the UUCA will no longer be relevant in just a few years’ time. The Covid-19 pandemic and the digital revolution will eventually ensure once and for all that no politician, vice-chancellor (VC) appointed by politicians, or any authoritarian body can control this digital inevitability.

Even the term “university” will become irrelevant and, I hope, will give way to the idea of a “multiversity”. While currently a university is defined as a group of faculties or colleges under a central control, a multiversity will be a coalition of several “universities” under a mutual cooperative management. Let me explain.

Firstly, let us look at the power of that authoritarian Act and where it stems from.

We must first of all understand that there are two essential ingredients without which there cannot exist this thing called the university: the student and the academician. In a true university education, an education minister is irrelevant. In a true university, the VC is also irrelevant.

You graduate with a first and second degree because of a faculty of discipline that has many academicians with different types of expertise. You graduate with a PhD because of an academician of worth who is acknowledged by his or her peers. The VC and the minister, we don’t need.

But in Malaysia, these two entities, the VC and the minister, are treated like gods on Olympus. They decree all and they decide all. That to me looks more like how a boarding school is run rather than an institution comprising experts and intellectuals of worth. But alas, that’s who we are and what we have become. Moving on.

The UUCA was created not to inspire creativity, not to inspire excellence, not to inspire curiosity and certainly not to effect change in society. It is there to control those two most important ingredients: the academician and the student.

I always remind my audience, whether in the classroom or when speaking in public, that academicians and students are kings in a university. The VC and the minister, in an idealised non-Malaysia world, are servants to the two entities. Just like every Malaysian baby born has the prime minister and the chief secretary to the government as his or her servants. But of course, that is in a Malaysia found only in the Kingdom of Heaven.

The digital revolution and the Covid-19 pandemic came sweeping in as forceful gods of change. Things that we thought were not possible suddenly became very possible. Unfortunately, as case numbers subsided and we began transitioning out of pandemic mode, we went back to pre-pandemic ways. But the “damage” has been done. How we coped in the past three years proved beyond the shadow of a doubt that education and work have changed and will further continue to be totally disrupted beyond recognition.

I have shared with a few academicians that I foresee a time when a professor of high calibre will work with three or four universities that hire professional services with lucrative contracts. The days when an academician lives and dies with one single university will soon be over.

In fact, universities with their teaching staff tied to one place till they die will become examples of mediocrity and the staff will be deemed of poor intellectual worth. A truly worthy academician is a floating one, jumping from one institution to another within an online digital world that has a holographic and virtual presence.

The floating academician with contracts at four different learning institutions will have better intellectual networking as well as a more rounded experience than the one tied to one place. If the UUCA flexes its muscle against this free-flowing academician at one institution, don’t worry, his or her income will never be jeopardised as there are still three other contracts, perhaps mostly overseas, that will provide a good living. Furthermore, the academician will be freed from any administrative functions that is the bane of good teachers.

Those officials who support the UUCA are living in the past. Hey man, welcome to the future!

What of the student? What of students like Adam Adli Abd Halim who faced arrest over his political activism, or many others who struggled to graduate while being punished by a university?

The answer to that is the multiversity. Several universities will pool their resources to form a coalition of universities across the globe that frees them from any one political regime. Students can register and virtually attend any classes that have been accredited by the multiversity towards a graduating total.

So Adam Adli and activists like Fahmi Reza can never be kicked out just because they disagreed with the VC or the minister. They can just sign up for their courses with other partners within the multiversity, perhaps from Scandinavia or the United States. After all, when graduates of a multiversity finish their degrees, the whole world will be their place of employment, not just li’l ole Malaysia.

So I would not worry about the UUCA. Keep it, strengthen it, nobody cares anyway. The future will go its own way and so will our children and future academicians. In a multiversity that crosses political, racial and geographical borders, there is no place for an Act that will no longer be worth the bits and bytes it’s written in.

Prof Dr Mohd Tajuddin Mohd Rasdi is Professor of Architecture at the Tan Sri Omar Centre for Science, Technology and Innovation Policy Studies at UCSI University. The views expressed here are entirely the writer’s own.