Public varsities can lead the way

WHEN I was working at a public university in my younger years before the 21st century arrived, I heard two phrases from the university’s management that I thought destroyed the integrity of universities in Malaysia: “world class” and “ranking”.

Today, I would like to remind universities of their sacred responsibility to change society and humankind for the better by building bridges of trust with knowledge and ensuring a sustainable future for our children.

That young associate professor I was then wondered why a public university was talking about “world class” and “ranking”. As I understood it, my role was to contribute to societal change and inspire graduates to do so too.

Teaching architecture or engineering or whatever was just a means of guiding students towards the ultimate aim of making lives better for everyone in this country, and after that, the world.

I also started publishing books, writing to the media and conducting public talks and forums for that very purpose. And I trained my PhD graduates towards those ends.

After 30 years of publishing 56 books and 700 media articles and being involved in hundreds of public talks and forums, I hope mine has been a life well spent. I received some accolades but mostly I have been shunned by mainstream academia for being “too controversial”, for being “anti-Melayu”, and also a “sesat (lost) Muslim”.

Despite some personal challenges brought on by my notoriety and anti-establishment reputation, I soldiered on, awaiting signs that society is changing.

And now I think Malaysia is at a crossroads with a unity government in power. The old power of racial rhetoric is now joined to a Madani, or civilisational, narrative of Malaysia.

However, a new “Saruman” of race and religion has surfaced and it is now threatening to pull Malaysia back in time to the rhetoric of the 1970s and 1980s. We must not let this happen, and to that end a change in our public universities is critical. We must take the university back to its original purpose of developing the whole of our society and not just the CVs of academicians and vice-chancellors.

Firstly, the KPI of professorship must be weighted more towards engagement with society as a public intellectual. Perhaps it’s enough that associate professors demonstrate depth but a professor must also show a commitment to the philosophy of “breadth”, to crossing disciplines and concerns. The mark of a professor should now be depth of study as well as breadth of reach beyond the field.

Secondly, universities must bring civil society into its corridors of intellectuals so the mixing of the two will produce an academic outlook that is more than just numbers in charts and tables. With cooperation like this, universities could produce real action plans and projects of true change.

I would like to say here that the discourse between civil society and academicians must be in Bahasa Malaysia because Malay society is wealthy in materials but does not work much with the wider world. As Malaysians, all of us who have tertiary education must be able to conduct any discourse in Bahasa Malaysia, of course, no two ways about that.

Thirdly, vice-chancellors and board chairmen of universities should hold a town hall event open to all every year to share their vision, progress and ideas so that the people can see how their tax ringgit is performing, and how their children might have a different and better future.

These town halls will also take the wind out of the sails of politicians who love to pull us all back into the abyss of race and religious concerns.

All faculties in universities must have a board of advisers comprising at least six individuals, half from civil society and the others from industry and academia. These advisers should have the power only to advise on and not to dictate faculty operations. However, all research grant approvals must go through their scrutiny.

For grants above RM200,000, the advisory board can convene a public committee to evaluate the proposed research. And all academicians must present their findings at a town hall meeting attended by the media and the public.Research grants can add up to billions but no grant is given for book publication and projects to change societal perception and practices. Enough with the emphasis on research.

We need to educate the public because from the public will come the next MPs and assemblymen who will form federal and state governments. So far, most of our elected representatives tend not to come from the aristocracy or the rich elite but from ordinary Malaysians. It is therefore imperative that universities open the minds of the people to a new narrative for Malaysia, and a new vision of a sustainable life and lifestyle.

If our universities could change their fruitless focus on world rankings, we could become a developed nation in every sense of the word. We must not compete against other universities in the world but compete among ourselves to rebuild the trust between our people, to manage our resources towards the sustainable goals of the world, and lastly to honour the legacy of all our people. The public university, not Parliament, must lead the way to our collective future. Parliament, in many instances, should just ikut saja (just follow along) with the people.

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.