Humaniversity: humanising the university

by; Professor Tan Sri Dato' Dzulkifli Abd Razak

IN my annual address for 2011 to the university community last week, I spoke about Humaniversity: Transformation to Humanise the University.

This is perhaps the culmination of 11 years of provoking it to look for new vistas to give meaning to universities, and higher education, in particular.

Over the last decade, the threat against the university as an institution in its own right has never been more intense. Drawing an analogy between the university and a frog in simmering water, universities have, by and large, accommodated the slow boil so far.

Perhaps tertiary institutions are unaware that soon the water will boil over, and like the frog, they will no longer be able to "jump out".

Then we have to face what is called a "dead university" scenario -- which was identified at the Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM) Scenario Planning workshop five years ago -- if the inertia in academic leadership continues.

Many universities and tertiary education systems are under an array of economic, geo-political and hegemonic cultural siege that are dramatically changing higher education as we know it.

This view is shared by Cary Nelson, Professor Emeritus at University of Illinois, the United States in his book, No University is an Island: Saving Academic Freedom (New York University Press, 2010). He blames the erosion of the fundamental principles of higher education, namely academic freedom, shared governance and tenure to a lengthy list of trends and forces -- including corporatisation and globalisation.

Nelson is president of the American Association of University Professors, the largest non-profit multidisciplinary professional organisation for academic staff in the US.

That he bemoaned what universities are undergoing adds to many voices of dissent in academic circles, which further increases the uncertainties of the future of education.

When a university's culture is subjected to intrusive micromanagement at various levels, it can only serve to create fear, which undermines the notion of free inquiry upon which knowledge and innovations blossom. This is a common phenomenon in our universities.

As a way out, many academics prefer to "insulate" themselves by being risk-averse and closing their minds to articulating new and bold ideas and concepts, which are radical enough to spark a transformation.

A safer bet is to focus on the "me-first" syndrome that is devoid of human empathy due to their disengagement from societal needs and wants.

Over time, universities serve as no more than a part of the mechanisation processes despite the severe imbalances they cause to the ecosystem, human well-being and humanity as a whole.

It is worse when such an imbalance tends to dehumanise the larger sector of the global population, especially in the developing world.

Nelson cited the "demand for instrumentalisation" -- which is skewing the curricula towards job training and reducing the preparation of students for citizenry in a democracy -- as an "anachronism".

In other words, today's education greases the cogs in a dysfunctional mechanised world dictated by the fancies of shareholders who seek to dominate the education sector.

The impetus to humanise universities (and education) is to offset such a dominating trend by reclaiming the ethos of education that regards people as valued members of the community anchored in virtues that nourish humanity as their core responsibility and universally accepted commitment.

That place is what we term the "humaniversity", where the human dimensions of the university are fully restored as part of the transformation to challenge the status quo.

It is imperative to work towards the humaniversity if the vision of "people first" is to be met.

This is further underlined by the recent Human Development Report 2010, which is emphatic that "national development should be measured not just by economic growth, as had long been the practice, but also in terms of broader aspects of well-being".

Lead author Jeni Klugman says: "Our results confirm, with new data and analysis, two central contentions of the Human Development Report from the outset: human development is different from economic growth, and substantial achievements are possible even without fast growth."

Malaysia would do well to ponder on this in realigning its education agenda and processes for the future, acknowledging that the policies that advance economic growth and the humanistic aspects of development differ, although they overlap.

In so doing, we may still have the chance to jump out of the simmering water, and save future generations.

No Time to monkey around with R&D

by;Professor Tan Sri Dato' Dzulkifli Abd Razak

This column had highlighted before how crucial research on genomics, using rubber as an example, is helping the country's economy to grow. By developing superior scientific and technical expertise to discover novel knowledge, related industries can move up the value chain with relative ease.

As demonstrated by the newly established Centre for Chemical Biology at Universiti Sains Malaysia (www.ccbusm.com), much can be gained by pushing Malaysia as an internationally reputable, cutting-edge R&D centre. In the case of rubber, the race was with a number of countries that had the same desire to be the first because this will position the winner to be the leader in the field, with a host of intellectual property rights (IPR) and consultancy options at its disposal, thus creating new sources of wealth. Speed is of the essence.

However, there is much more to it than meets the eye. The downside is often painful, though it can offer very useful lessons, especially in building new and critical talent pools for the future. In the USM experience, we wasted precious time in getting the process started when the partners who had initially agreed to work with us backed out for some unknown reason.

More puzzling is that one of them later announced a similar collaboration with another research agency abroad. Not only was time lost, but it also bred suspicion and mistrust among those who rightly should be working together for the national interest. All this smacked of some ego trip that derailed the entire project and its good intentions.

Unfortunately, it did not stop there. When it came to the actual implementation, some researchers and bureaucrats felt uneasy while others felt threatened and made it difficult for the research to take off. Thus, more time was wasted, many more relationships went sour and more egos got busted!

Though many do not even understand the significance of the science, few cared to find out what it was all about and clear the way ahead. In fact, even when the work was completed and the outcome delivered, there were still attempts to snoop around quite unethically.

In other words, without the passion to drive the research and the perseverance to fight for the sake of science, one would have easily given up or chosen not to attempt it at all.

That means Malaysia would remain stagnant while our neighbours pass us by sooner or later, taking with them our resources and leaving us vulnerable. Ultimately, our future would be squandered.

The intense focus on R&D will not stop. For example, one country is currently embarking on a 1,000-plant genome project to secure heritage and expand its sources of new wealth. With state-of-the-art sequencing platforms and the know-how, its researchers are able to innovate sequence analysis and bioinformatics, targeting not just 1,000 but 100,000 genomes in the years to come! When that day arrives, what will happen to our biodiversity, let alone our future heritage and survival as a sovereign nation?

This kind of challenge must be an early warning to those who are concerned about the nation's destiny and its capacity to do science as carved out in Challenge 6 of Vision 2020 (I wonder if one can still recite it). We have what it takes to accomplish this but only if we keep our individual egos at bay and focus on the work as a collaborative team, come what may.

The most recent opportunity lost is the case of the orang utan genome, uncovered by a group of foreign scientists at the Washington University Genome Centre. Two species of orang utan from the forests of Indonesia and Malaysia have had their genomes sequenced — these are endangered species whose population is in rapid decline.

While Malaysians should have been the first to do this and take the lead — after all, the orang utan are in our backyard — this was not the case. Worse still, not a single one of the more than 50 authors of the published paper, entitled Comparative and demographic analysis of orang utan genomes, is a Malaysian. Yet the first line in the preamble clearly mentions that "orang utan" is derived from a Malay term meaning "man of the forest". How embarrassing! More so when we consider what USM had to go through to put Malaysia on the map and stand tall in genomic R&D, on a par with others globally.

Clearly, the days to monkey around with R&D are over. It is time for serious business.

Making work experience and training count

The UK's Shadow Secretary of State for Education Andy Burnham recently made a suggestion that could be beneficial to us as we reconstruct our vocational and technical education system. Burnham suggested that work experience placements or training should be advertised to give everyone a chance to try out for them, especially those with poor and disadvantaged backgrounds and are most likely to miss out if offers are confined to "conversations around the dinner table" or arranged through connections.

As jobs become scarce, work experience and on-the-job training have become the "new" criteria for employers seeking suitable candidates. These are informal and unofficial requirements but have created a Catch-22 situation for many.

Without work experience or training, the chances of landing a job are slim, but with no opportunity to get a job or participate in a training scheme, there can be no experience. Besides, there are only so many places open for work experience these days and there is an expanding student population that needs work experience placements. Meritocracy aside, having no work experience can be a barrier for most job-seekers.

Gone are the days when work experience was regarded as part of on-the-job training arranged by employers so that one could fit the job one was hired for. In the training of healthcare, engineering and legal personnel, work experience is mandated in an organised manner and known by various names, for example, well accredited and supervised. There are structured mechanisms through which one can acquire the necessary experience for the purposes intended, including employability.

The same cannot be said of the other professions despite many employers insisting on "tailor-made" graduates. Unless they too come up with a structured programme for work experience that can be tailor-made, it would not be fair to insist on it. What's more, today's work experience placements are largely unpaid or poorly. While some kind of mandatory requirements are fast emerging, there are no regulations, so there is no transparency.

What this means is, as Burnham alluded to, the talent of millions of students will go untapped. "It remains possible for children from poorer backgrounds to climb high. But it is harder for them if, unlike their more privileged peers, they have never seen the inside of a barrister's chambers or PR agency or newspaper," he said.

In the meantime, many are said to be turning to vocational training as an option to get work experience and apprenticeship. They prefer to learn and earn rather than be deprived of a meaningful job or be cheated of one because the system is not well organised. One could become a cheap pair of hands.

As Malaysia is now trying to reconceptualise its vocational and technical education system as part of the integrated talent build-up under the New Economic Model (NEM) and the Economic Transformation Programme, the points that have been raised by Burnham deserve a deeper discourse. Many countries, not only developed but also developing like Brazil, have moved in the right direction. But none of their methods can be superimposed on another without taking the local idiosyncrasies into account.

The aim, nevertheless, is to convince employers to put their money where their mouth is if they want tailor-made employees — much like the professionals who are trained and accredited. And the best way is to work closely with vocational and technical institutions with the involvement of universities.

Universiti Sains Malaysia is currently working on such a scheme in partnership with the Northern Corridor Implementation Agency (NCIA) and Deloitte Malaysia. The Human Capital Development Initiative, or better known as the Regional Talent Repository, is aimed at narrowing the mismatch between the supply of and demand for talent, using the electrical and electronics industry as a template.

The scheme will consider how best to build awareness of the relevance of work experience and where to seek it, and match talent with the right employer. The need for this is mentioned in the concluding part of the NEM: "Employers should have a greater say in the vocational and skills-training curriculum. It is essential that a cluster approach be adopted to take advantage of the scale economies and proximity to the industry, for example, the Human Capital Development Initiative of USM-NCIA-Deloitte."

This is a bottom-up effort that should be supported so that it becomes a part of the existing employment ecosystem. It can, in fact, boost Talent Corporation's efforts — at the sectoral level — to move away from the current silo structure that serves individual needs. There is a long way to go, but the scheme is a good starting point to make employability a more equitable opportunity by providing work experience all around.

But the industry must get its act together as well.

Key Intangible Performance

PERHAPS it is only natural that some parties raised concerns about making History a must-pass subject. We may learn patriotism through the subject but, like loyalty, patriotism cannot be measured in any meaningful way through written examinations.

There are no Key Performance Indices (KPI) for "intangibles". We need to consider another acronym: KIP -- Key Intangible Performance, which does not anchor in numbers and percentages, but rather values, ethics and quality of being.

Still, given Malaysia's education landscape, examinations can do wonders to change behaviours.

Without the spectre of tests, there is no guarantee that the allotted period is not swapped for another examination subject. After all, our successes are measured almost entirely by examination results and performances. So is our reward system.

In other words, with no exams, History will quickly remain history. But others have argued that even with exams, the behaviour change will be transient.

Once the test is over, all will go back to normal! The cases of Civics and Moral Studies have been used as examples.

How should History be taught? Some eminent scholars and historians say that History should be dealt with "holistically".

Here, I would like to share the experience of my son who decided to study Spanish in Mexico upon graduating from a university in the United Kingdom.

He is still in Mexico, immersed in the culture, history and heritage of the Republic.

He is very much a Malaysian but enjoys "being a Mexican".

He was in Malaysia in September for Hari Raya Aidil Fitri but rushed back to celebrate the 200th year of Mexican Independence.

His introduction to Mexico is illuminating and instructive indeed.

He learns Spanish not only in the context of conventional grammar classes but also Mexican history, culture and heritage dating back to the early years of Mesoamerican civilisation.

The lessons embody elements of inherent patriotism through deep understanding of the interactions of history, culture and heritage infused over time.

The context and nuances strengthen the foundation and significance of history upon which the rest are built, gradually supported by the language.

He visited museums with well-preserved artefacts all over Mexico. He went to many heritage sites of the days of the Aztecs and various cultural centres where visitors observe and even take part in some of the traditional rituals and dances.

There are exams, of course, including that of the Mexican dances, but it is not about regurgitation for the sake of achieving an "A" or remaining oblivious to the subtleties of what Mexico is all about.

In his first two months in Mexico, he went to Taxco to sample the lifestyle and integrate with the locals.

This indirectly forced him to immerse himself in the culture and language of the local community. Only after such an experience did he return to the Autonomous National University of Mexico.

Almost every city in the Republic exudes cultural awareness. Metro stations are designated as focal exhibition centres to acquaint the public of aspects of history-cultural consciousness.

Every metro station represents a timeline of history, from the birth of the 1917 Constitution to notable presidents including Aztec emperors.

Streets after streets take the name of national heroes such as Benito Juarez or Miguel Hidalgo.

Artists, poets, muralists and authors are also given the same respect and recognition for enriching Mexican culture.

They can be likened to free and endless outdoor museums for all to learn and reflect so that Mexican history remains alive all the time.

Mexicans stand proud buttressed by a deep appreciation of their historical past rooted in one common single language which is spoken and cherished by all.
While they proudly acknowledge their indigenousness, they remain a community of mestizos.

This is where Malaysia deviates from the Mexican daily experience of multicultural mestizos reaching a matured level of unity without having to worry about being unpatriotic.

Malaysia is still thematically centred on food and festivities. We withdraw into the comforts of our ethnic cocoons, shutting out the historical-cultural-heritage significance surrounding us.

Come Christmas and the New Year, we superficially sample Malaysian multiculturalism yet again.

So perhaps in seeking out a holistic approach to History, Mexico could be a country to learn from!

It has perfected the art of achieving 1Mexico by harnessing the KIP-intangible dimensions of language, history, culture and heritage holistically.

• The writer is vice chancellor of Universiti Sains Malaysia

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