Time to rethink research priorities

We needed that pivot towards science and technology 50 years ago. Now it’s time to include the humanities to move towards a holistic future.

TWO things that happened last week prompted this column’s subject matter today.

One was a conversation with the leadership of a public university on research grant funding, and the other was a recently announced My Brain 2.0 Scholarship for next year.

First, I asked a colleague from that public university what percentage was usually granted between the Science-Engineering team compared with the humanities one? He said, generally, it is about 70:30, with the humanities getting the smaller chunk.

Next, I noted that the Higher Education Ministry official who announced My Brain 2.0 said the PhD and Master’s scholarship is geared “mostly” for STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) fields of study.

In this column, I want to make a strong case for changing the priority of research funding, from 70:30 in favour of Science-Engineering to the opposite, or at least 50:50 between the two areas of study.

Why? Well, if you have to ask, then I have to ask in turn: Where have you been living for the last 20 years?

Sometimes I feel like an alien in my own country, in my faith and in own race.

No, actually, not sometimes but most of the time. Have we not witnessed the state of mistrust among people, among races, among faiths, even among followers of the same faith?

There is so much mistrust, bigotry and extremist thinking that it all piles up higher than our overflowing landfills. The stench in the air created by extremism, intolerance and distrust is thicker than what the haze brings most months.

Half a century ago, we decided to push for science and technology to make better lives for ourselves in terms of physical wellbeing. I think that was the right decision – but that was 50 years ago! We should have graduated from that decision years ago.

And 25 years ago, the state of nation-building began to deteriorate and it hasn’t stopped going downhill since while distrust and disharmony keep growing.

I can reel off 30 major incidents of racial and, worse, religious hatred that occurred in just the last 10 years.

If the fact that a political coalition based on religious issues twisted to fit its political agenda is gaining ground among the people does not send ministers, officers and academicians scrambling to fix what ails this nation, I think we are in deep trouble.

We have a problem with what is being taught in religious schools if it isolates one faith and race from the rest of the world.

We have a huge problem when public school teachers demonstrate they have absolutely no knowledge about nation-building with the inculcation of values such as acceptance, dignity for all and respect for heritage.

We have public universities organising a congress that roots for one race and one religion while the salaries of its academicians and leadership are paid from taxes collected from people of all races.

We have urban poverty that forces children to live under bridges with no place to read or study.

We have thousands of houses of worship that do not speak to one another for fear of proselytisation.

We have university students who don’t know their own religion from a global perspective and only know it from under their tempurung (coconut shell) of communal faith.

We have academicians who cannot put together two sentences on a problem using a holistic framework of knowledge-building within a society construct.

We have corruption that destroys our environment and municipal leadership that does not know what living in a multi-cultural society is about.

Need I go on? Is none of this a priority?

When I read social science or humanities research for evaluation, I feel that even these social scientist have problems understanding what the noble goals of the humanities are supposed to be.

These researchers use survey upon survey with no participation methodology that understands the ground and the root of issues.

The product is always papers and more papers without any significant contribution to societal change and development.

I sincerely hope that the Higher Education Minister stops listening only to academician “advisers” who are probably people from the sciences, and also those who don’t know how to frame a problem in a holistic manner.

And please don’t listen only to those who choose the simplest of gaps in knowledge to spend money on, because that just gets us many papers and awards and graduate PhDs who can’t think beyond their little kingdom in their own disciplines.

It is time to think about what kind of people-first nation we want to aim for alongside what kind of environmentally sustainable lives we should be living. Both must walk hand-in-hand or else all will fall and fail.

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.