Guiding young academics towards excellence

FMT Column 4th September 2022

Every year when university rankings are published, various universities are either praised or castigated for their performance.

Making any improvement within any university ranking system usually takes years of deliberate work on the part of a university. It requires a carefully thought-out plan that is executed correctly. This is rolled into funding, which is used for improving infrastructure, research and other programmes.

One of the major key performance indicators (KPIs) centred around the quality of academic staff is the number of PhD holders in each faculty.

This has led to ambitious programmes to grant scholarships to existing academic staff to pursue doctorate studies, or recruit those who have already obtained a PhD.

However, one of the biggest mistakes of Malaysian university faculty leadership is the failure to provide proper nurturing and guidance to their young academic staff. Providing this guidance is probably the most important factor in improving Malaysia’s position within university rankings, but is largely ignored.

This is perhaps one of the biggest weaknesses in public university governance. This should be the linchpin in creating Malaysian public universities as centres of excellence and needs to become a major focus of university leadership.

What needs to be done

Public university faculty cultures usually have an inherent expectation that their young academics should work solely for the benefit of faculty and university goals and objectives.

Strategic planning within public universities has created a culture of pursuing KPIs simply for the sake of achieving the set KPIs.

There are many consequences of this to the detriment of both the young academics and university as a whole. While young academics are spending excessive time and effort being involved in faculty and university activities, this detracts from the time they should be spending undertaking research.

University faculties may achieve all their set KPIs and win internal awards, but the faculty as a whole doesn’t improve intellectually, where young academics rise in academic stature.

University objectives and pursuits sometimes skew the research topics that young academics pursue.

One public university utilised the Balanced Scorecard as a tool in its strategic planning process. Many young academics who were granted a scholarship to pursue doctoral studies chose topics related to the Balanced Scorecard, believing they would please their superiors.

This led to a very narrow diversity of knowledge within the business faculty, with too many studying similar topics. No senior people within the faculty or chancellery advised their young academics to pursue topics they had a deep interest and passion for, rather than trying to please others.

Unfortunately, many university leadership groups become nepotistic in the manner they select people for particular positions. This develops into a crony culture where those who carry favour with their superiors occupy the best positions. This is the enemy of meritocracy.

Many positions, including those at the top — the vice-chancellor, deputy vice-chancellors, and department heads — have become political rather than academic administration positions. Young academics are immersed within a university where there are informal rules for success which must be met to rise within the organisation.

Many leaders are very ego-centric. Consequently, approaches that pander to superior idiosyncrasies become the key to success, rather than meritocracy.

Too often, administration positions that carry power become sought after, rather than the pursuit of academic excellence through teaching and research.

Workloads within faculties become clogged up with systems that are questionable in terms of adding to teaching quality. The Objective Based Learning (OBE) becomes an end in itself, rather than a means to an end.

ISO standards have nothing to do directly with classroom experiences and add to unnecessary paperwork workloads. These systems add to rigidity in the teaching processes, turning places of learning into learning factories.

This is bringing teaching meritocracy to the lowest common denominator, a barrier to improving teaching excellence.

Young academics are used by predator professors to advance their own careers. The young academics become writers for professors, who become freeloader authors, to increase their publication rate and increase citations.

The whole area of research publications has become a major scam.

There are thousands of academic journals that require payment to publish today. These publications prey on young academics from the third world who are desperate to publish. Some faculties are actively encouraging this, in order to get their faculty publications up.

Many conferences now are undertaken primarily for profit rather than creating international forums for intellectual exchange.

Lack of academic freedom is another problem, particularly within the social sciences.

Being a member of a public university carries with it the same restrictions civil servants have in making public comments.

Some universities even require their staff to seek permission from the vice-chancellor in order to undertake a television interview, or publish a piece in the media. Academics who become popular via the local media are often frowned upon by their peers, and labelled as publicity-seeking.

Universities in developed countries take the opposite stance. They encourage their academics to engage the media. They understand that publicly well-known academics actually attract students and funding.

Most young academics are not given the guidance they need from their seniors to excel in their careers.

Too often, staff development budgets may be diverted to fund functions for visiting VIPs and internal staff training fabricated to achieve the faculty KPI. Preference is given to staff pursuing doctorates, rather than broader and shorter-term top-up courses.

Too many young academics are encouraged to specialise in narrow areas, becoming one-dimensional thinkers, rather than educational generalists, which are most valuable for teaching at the undergraduate level.

Academic excellence can be greatly improved. Some faculties around the country understand the issues outlined above and score very well in international rankings. It’s important that the rest follow.

We are now seeing a number of private universities in Malaysia outranking public universities. Nurturing young academics correctly will go a long way towards making public universities much more competitive.

Originally published in FMT 4th September 2022

Subscribe Below: