Yoursay: The myth of improvement in our universities

YOURSAY | ‘It is madness to expect better results without radical changes in education.’

Stop being obsessed with university rankings

Anonymous_1574178243904.6661574178047385: We don't care about university rankings, but it is the universities themselves who boast about their rankings, even though the rankings may be questionable.

Universities use their rise in rankings in their advertisements and brochures. Take for instance, in 2018, Universiti Malaya (UM) was ranked 46 in Asia by Times Higher Education Asia University Rankings (THE), and Universiti Tunku Abdul Rahman (Utar) was ranked 99 in the same rankings. In the 2018 world rankings, UM was ranked 351-400 and Utar was ranked 501-600 by THE.

But Utar conveniently disregarded the world ranking, and proclaimed itself the second-best institution in the country and milking it for all it's worth. Also conveniently ignored was the fact that in QS rankings, Utar was nowhere near the top five research universities (UM, UPM, USM, UKM, UTM).

"We also observe that UM improved most in the ‘gameable’ components of citations and reputation,” said academic Lee Hwok Aun.

Reputation is ‘gameable’. In the QS rankings, for the peer reputation category for international institutions, a reviewer is asked to list 30 institutions. Being a reviewer myself, I could not conscientiously put UM in the top 30 institutions in the world.

The other categories such as international staff, international student and student-staff ratios are also ‘gameable’ if you have money to hire and admit foreign staff and students.

However, I disagree that citations are ‘gameable’. This is where research and innovations come in.

The universities have to work hard for that, and need a lot of funding for publications and innovations to happen. UM's emphasis on research within the last 10 years, and their High Impact Research programme, for which the government poured in a lot of money, really helped propel UM to the top 100 in QS rankings.

David Dass: The writer exposes the myth of improvement, and exposes the fraud of commercially-motivated rating agencies.

He also shows how universities improve their ranking by skewing their activities to produce spikes in the graphs demonstrating improvement.

The focus should be, first, to train students for jobs that are out there. To train them to meet the needs of employers. To train them to study independently, to think critically, to communicate effectively, to conduct research and write well-structured reports.

When teachers can do that, they will then be able to undertake research and publish their findings on matters that can help move us forward on as many fronts as possible.

Can we find effective vaccines for malaria and dengue, for instance? Or reverse diabetes and halt the progression of glaucoma or enlargement of the prostate? Or explain the psychology of racism or religious extremism or of mob violence?

New Hope: We compete in a globalised environment. To prepare our younger generation for the competition, our universities will have to compete with the rest of the universities overseas by a standard applied internationally to stay relevant.

Our education system has been butchered to churn out graduates who can neither read nor write the language of commerce and communication internationally. The government is forced to take a majority of the local graduates because the private sector will not take them due to lack of skills.

It is easy to say that the private sector is racist and not supporting the local universities; take a good look at the Malay graduates from overseas universities and you will notice that most of them are gainfully employed by the private sector. What does that imply? It is not about race, but about skills required by the private sector.

There is no dispute that Bahasa Malaysia is the medium of communication, especially with government departments, and its use has never been disputed. But to compete internationally, you need in English, or else the graduates are of no value to companies doing business internationally.

The educationists are covering up for their flawed thinking which does not help the younger generation. Even an economic world power like China is sending millions of students overseas so that they are proficient in English to enable the country to compete internationally. The ‘katak dibawah tempurung’ (frog under the coconut shell) mentality will never propel Malaysia into developed status in 2025.

Singapore is the biggest recipient of the young talent in Malaysia. They offer opportunities and scholarships to young Malaysians, and in the end, our talents make Singapore more and more progressive because our 'educationists' are lacking vision, and pandering to political and religious interests rather than that of the nation.

Change is always painful, but if not now, when? Stop blaming others for our own inadequacy. It is madness to expect better results without radical changes in education.

The Analyser: The role of universities is not to train students to think critically. That is the role of parents. If students are not capable of thinking critically by the time they reach university, they will never learn. Universities have the role of refining the ability to think critically.

To study independently is an ability destroyed by both parents and the education system. Let’s face it, to do anything independently is frowned on by Malaysian society. If you are not allowed to be independent in one avenue of your life, how can you be expected to be independent in your academic life?

So, how do we stop obsessing? Maybe you could start by taking pride in your achievements instead of constantly denigrating yourselves with impossible comparisons.

Malaysia will never compete with top-ranking universities. The mediocrity of Malaysian society will ensure that never happens.

Then perhaps if you started treating students like adults, instead of treating them like vermin to be controlled and repressed, you might find the whole tertiary sector challenged and re-vitalised.

Jay: Even if the universities stop being obsessed with rankings, parents unfortunately will not.

They need to examine the rating criteria. Look out for irrelevant stuff like 'inclusiveness'.

Anonymous_1536078333: Say what you may, we need to benchmark internationally, otherwise universities will become like government departments.

Dizzer: Fifteen or so years ago when UM first participated in the rankings, it came out 69th in the world. It turned out that internationalisation of faculty and students made up 40 percent of the total, and UM scored 40/40!

Why? Because QS looked at the data and saw that UM had significant numbers of Chinese and Indian students without realising that they were Malaysians and that UM had virtually zero international students. Duh!

Clever Voter: Despite improved rankings, our leading universities are lacking in universal values of respecting diversity and public interest.

The recent involvement of leading universities in political events tells a lot about their hypocrisy.

Education is all about giving all access, quality education and inclusion. Instead, we have universities pursuing a political agenda of racism, elitism, and exclusion.

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