Vice-chancellor: UM crisis report not correct

Universiti Malaya (UM) vice-chancellor Ghauth Jasmon today denied the university is in a crisis following mass resignation of its academic staff in protest against his leadership.

Umno-owned Utusan Malaysiareported on its front page today that 146 UM academic staff had resigned since 2009.

"The report is not correct on the figure. At 10.30am tomorrow, the university will release the true figure," said Ghauth (left), who has a background in engineering.

Quoting UM Academic Staff Association president Associate Prof Azmi Sharom, Utusan said the university had slipped into a crisis after 146 of its academicians, including professors and associate professors, resigned in protest against Ghauth's new academic policy,which is centred on university ranking.

Among those who resigned, 52 were academicians from the Faculty of Medicine, 12 from the Faculty of Business and Accountancy, 10 from the Faculty of Science and eight from the Faculty of Engineering, the daily said.

Utusan also said the university later hired 576 new lecturers, 80 percent of from other countries such as Bangladesh, Nigeria, the Philippines, Sri Lanka, India and Jordan, and sidelining local senior lecturers.

In a telephone interview with Malaysiakini this morning, Ghauth defended his policy, which requires UM academicians to publish more articles in world-recognised journals.

"The people who are happy with me are more than those not happy, because I am transforming UM to become a university of a higher quaility," he said.

"We are getting good staff from all over the world, so that UM can go up in the world ranking. This will create a good name for Malaysia as a world class centre of education."

Ghauth said he explained this to Higher Education Minister Khaled Nordin in Putrajaya this morning and Khaled advised him to call a press conference to give the correct figures, so that the people would know what was happening.

Azmi also refuted the Utusan report, saying that he never made the statement attributed to him and that he was a victim of "misquotes" by the newspaper.

He said the daily's report was based on a press conference held by a group of UM lecturers who were not happy with the policy on the publishing of articles in 'world class journals'.

"I was there only briefly, to tell the reporter that academic staff association members were speaking under the auspices of the association as they were worried that action would be taken against them under the University and University Colleges Act."

'University softened its stand'

Azmi said the controversial part of the policy was the requirement for lecturers to publish a certain number of articles in ISI journals, which are used by QS Quacquarelli Symonds in its ranking of universities all over the world.

"To the university, even if you come out with a lot of articles and they are not published in ISI journals, the university will not look at them.

"However, there can be some good articles in other forms, like books, monographs and so on, which they are ignoring."

Azmi said the academic staff understood the need to improve the standard of MU, but the staff association believes the ranking of the university should not be the basis of the university policy.

"Academia is very diverse The people who do the ranking have a narrow understanding and this does not take into account the very diverse ways in which quality can be measured."

After the staff association complained to the vice-chancellor, he said, the university softened the policy and started to take into account other publications of the academic staff.

Azmi also said he would instruct the association secretary to send a letter to Utusan urging it to withdraw its incorrect report.