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The high unemployment rate among local graduates and the quality produced by our local Universities raises the question of are the curriculums designed and in place applicable to the present environment.
{mosgoogle right} This relates also to the quality of the lecturers and the activities carried out daily. In this brief article, the activities of the lecturers and their interests are explained, the weaknesses and the strengths are discussed. One may think if this group of intelligentsia now in our Universities is engine of growth and innovation or they are dispensable? The tremendous efforts and recognitions paid by our Government to improve the quality of the local higher education system through channeling of large funds and identifying several local research Universities are well applauded. Research Universities status is accorded to 4 local Universities, which are responsible to carry out pioneer research in order to upgrade the quality. Prior to this, research grants were usually sourced from overseas which the lecturers were always exposed to stiff competition, and if sourced from local agencies (mostly from Government Agencies, such as UPEN, Pejabat Perpaduan and etc) the competition would not be as cut throat as funds from overseas. With the advent of research university status, the chances of getting a research grant increases, as lecturers attached to the University can apply for the fund, moreover, grants are automatically distributed among the schools. It means, lecturers can apply to the grant easily. All the grants require researcher to carry out thorough research on a particular area. Usually this involves activities such as field works, interviews, brainstorming, classroom analysis and discussions and sometimes lab experiments. And therefore, researchers will usually get helps from either fellow lecturers from the same area of interest, or hire a temporary stuff. This temporary stuff is called assistant researcher or officer, and they are mainly in charge of carrying out field works, analysis and other chores deem necessary by the principal researcher. Besides man power, new instruments have to be purchased, such as lap tops, cameras, thumb drives, overhead projectors, and even sometimes involved invitation of experts from overseas to attend a seminar. These involve large capital outlays, and since the salary of the lecturers is so low in Malaysia, these expenditures are covered by the grants. Usually the more projects or researches one lecturer involved, and as the result of the research, the publications in the journal or the recommendations in the research are adopted, the more fame and credits the researcher would gain. These credits will be recorded in the resume which is then referred for future promotions or upgradings. Thus, one may imagine grants and research are life blood in lecturer’s life in his decades of career in local Universities. However, the life style of lecturers is not the point here, what interests us is the number of researches involved and the number of equipments purchased. Since each research has its own specific interest and focus area, thus, each project and grant applied is rarely related or complemented by the previous research that the same researcher involved in. And when the lecturer applies for grant, he will first put down the area of interest, the reason of the research, the methodologies used, the expected results, and then the expenditures. Since this is a standard procedure to apply for grant, then the costs are involved in the application. And the costs mainly come from buying equipments. Therefore, each new project requires lecturer or the researcher to purchase new computer, new thumb drive, new printer, and sometimes even new office set-ups. So one may imagine, our local Universities are major buyers of PC equipments, but when one talks to any personnel and observe the equipments used by them, most of time they are out of date equipments. That is why completing a task and obtaining a signature from a lecturer takes ages even though the PC equipments bought by them are really “changgih”. Society puts high hope on the intelligentsia, and the ideas, researches and words spoken by this group of people are well heeded, as they represent the back bone of a civilization. Therefore, most of the time, society will refer to the group for ideas, and new insights on the current situations. As the job of the lecturers is to study, research and help mould and produce high quality graduates, they are often revered and referred. Thus the effort to channel funding to the local Universities is well applauded as it will boost the motivations and the morals of the lecturers. However, due to lack of monitoring and since our system is based on “ if you do not spend the full amount of grants allocated, next year budget or the grant will be reduced”, the lecturers are prone to spend unnecessarily. Instead of carrying out research to explain or to help resolve the current issues, this fund is usually applied and allocated to unproductive seminars, researches, and most of the time the research is shelved without publications. This unproductive expenditure coupled with the honorarium paid to the lecturers could amount to half of the total grant allocated to the research project. Before we proceed further, I would like to highlight the unproductive researches carried out and the spending spree of the lecturers in our local Universities to reinforce my arguments. Since the perception is that one has to spend the whole grant if the grant is unfinished, it will be reduced in the next year’s budget, and since the local lecturers are not prone to research or lacked of original idea to carry out a genuine research, most of the allocations are distributed or the approvals of the application are made easy. Therefore, seminars such as invitations to religious leaders to conduct religious speeches were held. The area of interests are; how do we perform “wuduk”, the method and pose that a muslim has to follow in other countries when performing prayers, reciting Al Qurans, and others. And the number of invited is not small, and all of them are treated as five star professors; with accommodations and flight tickets fully covered by the grant. Some of the projects may involve large number of lecturers or researchers, and the expenditures are usually enormous, which can amount to few hundred thousand RM. Most of the projects relate to ethnic relations, conflicts in the society, and also some relate to more ambitious purpose, such as international trades, financial markets and so on. With all respect, the researches done and the results obtained are not noble, the researches are just an replication and application to Malaysian phenomenon. Furthermore, most of the results and the write-ups ended up on the shelves without publication. So one may ask the usefulness of the research in the first place. The structure of the administration is that each faculty is headed by a dean who is responsible to oversee the day to day operations and also to promote research and carry out other chores. Below him are the heads of each department, which features different disciplines and area of interest. Since each lecturer is tasked to lecture with a minimum hour per semester, the lecturers are to be assigned new classes when the semester begins, attend meetings to discuss the issues arisen from the school. The issues are mainly administrative, such as change of classes, need to recruit new lecturers, and sometimes more productive issues are raised, such as do we need new curriculum and method to improve the current teaching styles. So being a lecturer is not easy, it involves many admin works and meetings. However, one may notice that what lacks here is the discussion of research and the current trends which are evolving outside the Universities. Although the theoretical parts are vital, the lack of understanding of the new issues evolved and emerged outside the campus raises doubt of our local lecturers’ capability to carry out quality research. We just need to see at the local graduates produced by the local Universities. The irony and the embarrassing part is that these graduates are not trained by low class lecturers, most of our local lecturers graduated from well known Universities overseas. And I believe they do not know how to change their curriculums, as the notes, handouts and lectures are similar each year. The notes and handouts give to the previous year students are similar to the ones distributed this year. The lagging, one may say is the result of lack of culture in our local Universities. Although our Universities are equipped with high class lecturers, most of them concentrate on earning more money through conducting classes in private colleges, involved in consultations with private sectors, and there is another group fully participates in gossip and politicking. Most of the topics revolve around local political scenarios, and therefore, Universities have become coffee shops full of “half baked” politicians speculating when will be the election, who is the next prime ministers and so on, instead of focusing on carrying out productive research. Our country does not lack debaters and rhetoric, what we really need is concrete discussions on published and well recognized papers. The roles of lecturers are to help mould and promote more peaceful, more tolerant and more responsible society. Remember, the status and the aura carried by the lecturers are looked high upon by the society. This respect is slowly diminishing among our society, as more and more lecturers charged to carry out the responsibilities are from certain group of cronies or the selection is not transparent, do not know what is needed and happening in the society, and place self interest before the society while carrying out his duty. The need for revamp or reengineering of our local Universities, I leave to the readers to decide. MoneyPolitics
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Without a proven and credible meritocracy system, these lecturers have no ability to produce good students. More often than not, the students can be more knowledgeable than them given the Internet technology and era.
It is necessary to make sure they are motivated, have pride in their work, and a sense of purpose and social responsibility.