The main challenges for higher education reform

 

Around 2012 when everyone was expecting the end of the world I attended a vice-chancellors’ retreat in Langkawi.

Then higher education minister Khaled Nordin lamented that he was tired of daily criticisms of universities caused by the people in the audience and he wanted them to find solutions.

I remarked to the vice-chancellor next to me that people who cause problems rarely know how to fix them and he might be better off finding a new set of advisors. There was no comment in reply.

Eventually the Malaysia Education Blueprint 2015-2025 (Higher Education) proclaimed 10 shifts to transform the system into what we have today, which by consensus is an ecosystem in the doldrums.

The 2020 blueprint for the private sector, 

Way Forward for Private Higher Education Institutions: Education as an Industry (2020-2025)

 never even saw the light of day.

So with the announcement of the new Higher Education Blueprint 2026-2035 we pretty much know what we will see.

Ten more shifts, eight catalytic enablers, moonshot thinking through as many strategic thrusts as they can dream up and dozens of implementation packages in a cascade of patronage.

Already highly respected experts have highlighted the lack of diversity in the blueprint panel.

This is not just a question of ethnicity but of diversity across-the-board in subject matter expertise, input from private universities which have half of our students and staff as well as diversity of ideas, experience and insights.

These experts are not just disaffected critics but people with decades of experience, research and insights into the Malaysian higher education system which can help address manifold issues.

First the crushing financial distress of the system as a whole, especially in the private universities, has been known for a long time from my own research with the Penang Institute in 2015-16.

We are now seeing a stream of universities not paying salaries due to impecuniosity, and multiple universities off-loaded in fire-sales or withdrawn from the market because of lack of buyers.

The National Higher Education Fund Corporation (PTPTN) remains the main source of finance for most students and was regarded as unsustainable by its own analysis, commissioned in 2019 by its then chairman Wan Saiful Wan Jan.

In 2016, non-tuition payments in the form of dividends, taxes, marketing and senior manager salaries amounted to 41% of PTPTN funds given to private universities.

Second, the lamentable state of academic standards, be it Malaysian universities heading rankings on academic fraud or spending millions on unofficial foreign commercial marketing firms but still languishing in league tables.

Even the National Professors Council will face the Public Accounts Committee to explain the findings of the-Auditor General’s report.

Third, the poor outcomes and costs for our most important stakeholders, our students, who are not represented on the blueprint panel.

Half of new graduates earn less than RM1,624 per month compared to RM1,527 for their peers.

The dreadful graduate labour market data shows that nearly half of Malaysian graduates are not in graduate level occupations. One in five is not employed at all.

These issues have been inherited by the current government and it is unlikely that they will be addressed by applying the same-old approach of previous governments and their advisors who caused these problems.

Even the idea that we know now, in a world of AI and multiversities, what will be required a decade in the future is preposterous, just as it was a decade ago when this was last tried.

We need new thinking because we know from the outcomes that the previous blueprint has failed.

Isn’t there something about stupidity being repeating things you know will fail? - FMT

The views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect those of MMKtT.