Last year, two Universiti Putra Malaysia (UPM) academics, a professor and deputy dean and a senior lecturer, were exposed for plagiarism, the most serious offence in academia.

Both of them plagiarised from the Internet and used the material for their ‘book’- ‘Writing an Effective Resume.’

No action was taken against these two, the UPM vice-chancellor Prof Dr Nik Mustapha R Abdullah said a warning was adequate - they both kept their job and titles and did not lose anything.

How can UPM - a research university - condone plagiarism? You call yourself a world-class university and yet allow your staff to plagiarise with impunity. Is it any wonder that standards in Malaysian universities are dropping like stones?

Worse still, the book is still available on the market. It looks like in Malaysian universities, research means copying from the Internet. Worse still, they are both still doing ‘research’.

If Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak wants to improve the standards of our public universities, the first thing he needs to do is to take action and punish these so-called professors. Worse, one of them is now a member of the National Professors Board. What a joke.

What does it take to clean up the monkeys in our public universities? UPM - University of Plagiarists Malaysia?