Skip ‘money-making’ university rankings, says academic

Sharifah Munirah Alatas laments the unquestioning participation of Malaysian institutions in rankings that are nothing but mere profit-making exercises.

Sharifah Munirah Alatas said Malaysian universities do not question how the rankings affect the way they teach, assign reading materials, and set grading systems.

PETALING JAYA:

 The ranking of universities worldwide has become nothing but a mere profit-making exercise by the organisations involved, and alternative evaluation mechanisms are needed, says an independent scholar.

Sharifah Munirah Alatas said while ranking organisations such as the QS World University Rankings, the Times Higher Education World University Rankings, and the Academic Ranking of World Universities claim to pursue academic excellence globally, they are actually businesses seeking to profit from participating universities.

“I would say this is an imposition of the neoliberal economic system that we are accepting wholesale,” she said at a panel session last week at the launch of “Ivory Tower Reform: A Vision for Higher Education in Malaysia”, a book that she edited.

Sharifah Munirah said while it is not wrong for Malaysian universities to take part in such rankings, they did so without questioning how the rankings affected the way they teach, assign reading materials and set grading systems.

She said that although she had previously suggested to the higher education ministry the need to do away with rankings, and to pursue an alternative evaluation mechanism, nothing has moved forward.

“Many universities in the West have separated themselves from the ranking (exercises). Yet we don’t emulate them,” she said.

A game for universities

Another panel member, academic Sarah Wijesinghe, said the rankings had become a game for participating universities.

She said a certain university, which she did not name, had established a dedicated team for the QS ranking, with a huge budget to obtain data on exactly how to compete.

“It is just about who has more money and who can manipulate this system to get a higher rank,” she said.

Profiting from publishing journals

An academic, Adli Musa of International Islamic University of Malaysia, said publishing academic journals has also become a profit-making venture.

Adli, who co-edited the book, said publishers such as Elsevier and others had been charging academics fees of up to RM1,000 to publish their works.

He also accused these publishers of not paying academics to review articles.

“We don’t get a single cent. Perhaps we get an appreciation letter, and then they charge others hundreds or thousands of ringgit to publish their work,” he said. - FMT