I read with distress Universiti Malaya's demise as the premier institution in this country from this year's THES (Times Higher Education Supplement) 192 ranking. For those of us who were students and closely associated with this offshoot of University of Singapore (now renamed National University of Singapore, ranked 19), it is indeed a terrible pill to swallow.
The writing was on the wall from the time the university lost its GMC (General Medical Council) recognition from Britain several years ago, but we chose to ignore that and instead politicised it.
THES assesses various categories but ultimately the quality of output in terms of the calibre of students and research are indeed telling. The publication of research papers in UM is pointedly miserable and in some departments virtually absent. Lecturers frequently attend conferences presenting only free papers or poster presentations. This will not do for world-class standards. Perhaps 'kampong' class but certainly not world class.
The university's main problem is undoubtedly leadership, or rather the lack of it. I speak at least for the medical faculty. There is, and has been even now a serious shortage of lecturers and the leadership just doesn't have the slightest clue how to overcome this problem till today. To compound the serious shortage of lecturers, those who remain are fond and even addicted to traveling for conferences or seminars lavishly organised by pharmaceutical firms in some far away island resort with karaoke sessions and disco dancing thrown in.
True commitment and dedication is virtually absent. Freeloading seems to be the norm being adopted by some of these lecturers. A significant proportion of the lecturers are further obsessed with their private practice both in and out of the hospital. They attend to cases after 5pm and finish at unearthly hours thus compromising patient safety. They are perpetually tired.
Student teaching? Postgraduate tutorials? Journal club meetings? Teaching of new skills? Clinical mortality and morbidity meetings? They are all put off or postponed so that time is preferentially allocated for the jet-set life of luxury, courtesy of pharmaceutical companies or their private practice. If the coaches are playing hooky, how can we produce champions?
Several of the university hospital's projects including its now troublesome RM50 million hospital information system, the trauma centre which has now virtually deteriorated to a white elephant and the pediatric and women's ward were bad decisions from Day One but the leadership approved it without clearly thinking through the consequences.
The decision-makers have no exposure whatsoever to the world outside their ivory walls. Top universities in THES rankings consistently try to lure private sector professionals so that students truly know what to expect in the outside world. A good example is the Imperial College in London.
At UM, even broadband facilities, which you would expect to be the norm in an institution of this calibre, is not freely available. Much of the students' hostels do not have broadband facilities forcing students to go the library where only four out of the 10 terminals work at any time and even then (because of the university's obsession to bar emails or pornography) many collateral sites are blocked off preventing students from gaining information quickly. Libraries are not open round the clock and indeed are sometimes closed during prolonged public holidays.
This is the end result if you are not focused, committed and serious to change. The higher education minister must be serious, and like MAS, should seriously consider bringing in hard- nosed corporate boys from non-GLCs to reverse UM's depressing fortune. It is indeed a reflection of our education standards and our ability to stand up tall to the outside world.
The attitude of 'tidak apa' or 'let's forget about it' should not be adopted ever as the world is watching and all this will affect our FDIs (foreign direct investments). Everyone, including UM's current staff, and old students must get together to make the change. In the end, it is always about people, people, people!
Just ask any Chinese school principal and he will give you a lesson in dedication and commitment. The holidaying and freeloading, now so deeply entrenched in a failed and corrupt system has to stop. The late professor TJ Danaraj, founding dean of the UM's medical school and its former vice-chancellor royal professor Ungku Aziz were visionaries but they were also disciplinarians.
But that genre is gone The higher education minister must head-hunt for a highly capable person even if it means going overseas. How in less then a generation we managed to bring such a world-class institution down to its knees is truly incomprehensible.
