Malaysian public universities are still going backwards

Vice Chancellors, deans and other office bearers tend to turn their little turfs into little empires. They employ 'their own team' and as a consequence become nepotistic rather than meritistic in their staff selection. Some universities will only employ staff from within their own state, thus drastically reducing the size of the employment pool for picking the best people for the job.

This power-concentrating approach to management is not healthy in an academic environment and leads to deep campus politics.

This culture is also reflected in the academic grant system for research. Most often, it's the senior researchers, those with patronage, who get grants – rather than the best applications. The system is full of patronage and bureaucracy where those who know the system prevail, preventing the best projects from being funded. Grant selection is conservative. Selectors seek safety and will tend to choose repetitive projects that can be finalized within tight timeframes rather than novel projects with an apparent risk.

Public universities have long been losing their best academics to overseas universities and even the private universities set up in Malaysia. This drain of the most experienced and senior academics was exponentially increased when the Najib Government cut staff funding and salaries for professorial staff a couple of years ago. The decision was not reversed by the Pakatan Government, so now many of Malaysia's most renowned and senior professors have retired at the very moment they are most needed to help revamp the institutions where they have worked for many years. This retired group were mainly educated in the US, UK and Australia and tend to be well connected, networked with fellow academics all around the world. They have left the ship, turning it over to a much younger group of academics who lack the depth of experience of the old guard. This is a great loss for Malaysian public universities.

The courses taught at Malaysian public universities have been primarily determined at ministry rather than university level. The degrees and courses taught at faculty level are chosen according to Ministry of Education criteria: what the ministry sees as the skills needed in industry.

The actual curriculum designed for these courses is primarily developed by younger academic staff, who have limited experience, limited resources, time constraints, and no opportunity to visit other universities teaching similar subjects to assess the issues involved with developing a new curriculum.

Deans and their staff usually take all the overseas study trips and the junior staff are left to cut and paste a curriculum. Curriculum designers have to contend with Bloom's Taxonomy, Objective Based Education (OBE), and even irrelevant ISO considerations. At the class level, teachers are so busy complying to paperwork demands when teaching, they're prevented from bringing out the best from their students through their own styles of teaching.

Teachers need to be taught about teaching methods within the classroom and how to learn within their subject areas, rather than how to comply with documentation.

Ironically, student councils were set up by Mahathir when he was education minister to control the student voice on campus. The Universities Act made it illegal for students to be involved in politics or to protest, even though prohibition is unconstitutional. Student Councils need to be disbanded and replaced with independent student unions. The unions should be recognized by the administration and have representation on University Board of Directors.

Students should be allowed to participate in the political system and hold forums and discussions on topics important to students and society in general.

Universities need to be centres of thought and discussion. Visitors to universities, like Zakir Naik, give students a narrow view, whereas other more diverse views should be presented to students so they can make up their own minds on issues.

There should be a focus on innovation and excellence (an overused word on Malaysian campuses) rather than rankings. University populations need to reflect the demography of the nation. Anything else will be dangerous and harm national welfare over the long term.