Competitive Pressures … Or The Lack Thereof

A few weeks ago I discussed the issue of funding in universities in the context of the Economist survey of higher learning . In this posting, I want to discuss the issue of competition within and between universities.

The Economist survey argues that universities will have to compete for the best students as well as the best professors on a global scale. Indeed, world class universities such as Harvard conduct their faculty searches on an international basis. But this presupposes that there already exists a competitive framework among academics within the broader university system. There is a ‘publish or perish’ culture in the academia in the US. Assistant professors who are recruited after obtaining their PhDs are immediately put on tenure track and have 6 years to put together a publishing record which would include 2 to 3 articles in major journals, at least 1 book and other administrative and intellectual contributions to the faculty (organizing conferences, giving talks etc…). Even if these requirements are fulfilled, there is no guarantee that he or she will be promoted to Associate Professor i.e. receive tenure. In my limited experience at Duke, only about ½ of the junior faculty recruited end up receiving tenure (and this is probably an overestimate). And these junior faculty hires have been recruited from a pool of 300 to 400 job applicants! Getting a job is already difficult. Getting tenure is no walk in the park either.

In contrast, there are no such competitive pressures within the academia in Malaysia. There is no ‘publish or perish’ culture. It is possible to stay at the level of Assistant Professor (or the equivalent titles in Malaysian academia) all your life without publishing a single piece of academic work. Tenure, presumable starts when you are confirmed as a permanent staff at a local university. You can work yourself up the academic ladder by pursuing administrative rather than academic accomplishments. Even the standards of publishing are far from strenuous. A fellow academic told me that he has reviewed applications for academic promotions which have listed newspaper articles and translated books as part of their academic ‘resume’. It is almost impossible to get fired for lack of output. The steps are onerous and have to involve the Minister of Higher Education. Given these structures, is it any wonder that the standard of academia in our universities is in the deplorable state that it is in?

If the academic staff are poorly trained, under-qualified and are not given incentives to push the research frontier (by using both the carrot – promotion based on stringent academic requirements - and the stick – fired if does not receive tenure), how can they teach and train a new generation of students and scholars from within?

It is not as if these competitive pressures exist in the private institutions of higher learning. The main purpose of these institutions or businesses is to generate revenue and create profit. There is no incentive for the administrators in these universities to pressure their academic staff to publish. Their main function rather is to teach as many classes as their schedules will allow them.

But I see more hope within the private sphere because external competitive pressures operate in that sphere. Demand has forced many of these private institutions to increase the range of courses being taught (from 1 + 2 to 2 + 1 to 3 + 0) which in turn has forced these institutions to hire more qualified academic staff to teach these courses. As the number of private institutions increase including those full-fledged universities such as Monash and Nottingham, it would not be impossible to foresee that private universities would be forced to compete, not only by price point, but also by recruiting more qualified academic staff to boost its reputation. These private institutions might also give incentives to academic staff to collaborate with the private sector to bring in research funds and initiate projects that would enhance the reputation of that institution. Indeed, the private sector might also prefer to work with private institutions to avoid the bureaucracy that’s endemic to the public sector.

I wouldn’t be surprised if there emerges an elite layer among the private universities (Monash / Sunway, Nottingham, HELP) that will challenge and perhaps surpass the elite among the public universities (UM, USM, UKM).

So, are our public universities doomed? Unless the structure is changed such that the academic staff are properly incentivized, it is likely that they would continue to be mired in the muck of underachievement and lethargy. One consequence is that students in the public universities will continue to bear the brunt of these effects – poorly taught and trained and less employable. We have already seen some of these effects – the hue and cry over the large number of largely Malay unemployed graduates from the public universities. Another is that the larger economy will be affected by the shortage of skilled workers in key sectors, dragging down our long term growth prospects.

Before we can even talk about competing for the best students or best talents, our public universities have to clean up their act internally first – clear out the deadwood and bring in fresh, rightly motivated academic staff.