I refer to the Malaysiakini article Higher Education Strategic Plan - a critique .

Syed Husin Ali's intervention on the question of tertiary education is most welcomed, in part for its measured tone, non-polemical outlook. Too often, questions of education and public policy are debated as if they were merely sites for larger political struggles.

I believe that we must analyse the problem of universities in Malaysia from a historical and foundational point of view. That is, we need to locate some of the central social and pedagogical assumptions that underscored tertiary education as it was founded during the colonial period, as well as the shifts that occurred with independence and then with the re-shaping of the universities post-May 13.

Its also equally important to consider the deep commercialisation of tertiary education evident in the non-state sector currently; a phenomenon which itself presents an equal number of troubling questions as does the state sector.

As I see it, without a thorough-going interrogation of these assumptions - from social equity to human resource management - we are poised to repeat the mistakes of the past that have led to the decline of the universities; be they mistakes founded with the best of intentions or those resulting from cynical political manipulation.

In short, we need a debate that gets to the root of the problem by first understanding the foundational frameworks that have shaped the trajectory of universities in Malaysia.