The Lack of Competitve Pressures: A Response

Kian Ming posted a blog post entitled "Competitive Pressures... or the Lack Thereof" earlier here. Kian Ming argued that "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."

His post has attracted a response from a regular reader of this blog, whose email I shall republish here below. The reader is a lecturer at a local private college himself, while his retired father was with a local public university. He seeked to establish the fact that there was to some extent, a "publish or perish" culture, but it was a discrimatory one. It also tells of the many ills which plague our local universities, supported with real life anecdotes:

"There are some aspects of your article which I do not agree with you. My dad was an academician in a public university and he was only promoted to a Professor when he was about to retire (about 2 years from retirement). There is no 'publish or perish' policy in public university for a certain group of privileged people. However as for my dad, coming from the non-privileged group, he and his colleagues have to publish a lot of their works and researches for chances of promotion and to stay alive in the university.

He would tell us at the dinner table that he was granted grants by international organizations and agencies and his other colleagues of the 'privileged group' would want to hitch a free ride or get a free meal. He would tell us that his junior colleagues 'of the privileged group' has gotten their professorship or associate professorship but has neither the experiences and the amount of work to justify the promotion.

Bear in mind, that there is a lot of politicking involved in public universities in Malaysia for academic promotion. The non-privileged group of academicians will either fight among themselves or work together. Most of them bitter about their status in the organization until the end of their tenure because they are not honored and recognized for the work they did. It happens and life is unfair. My dad and most of his colleagues from the non-privileged group have their basic degrees (some of them including my dad has first class honors), masters degrees and Ph.D. from top universities in UK and the USA.

However, even there are some people of the privileged group, were merited with promotions. However it constitutes only a small percentage from that group.

As for the private education institutions in which I am currently working in, does not permit their academicians to publish and to do research because of time constrains. The amount of teaching hours that a lecturer have to teach per week is about an average of 20 hours per week which is 2 or 3 times less the workload of a public university academician.

Private colleges and universities can hire any top notched academicians available in the market and paying them top money, but in actual fact, they would only end up teaching only and will not have the time for research. The bottom line for these private education institutions is how much money they can make. Thus is it worth the amount of money spend to hire these guys and get less teaching hours from them? That is why in most private education institutions, those with phd always end up doing administrative and managerial duties rather than to teach.

There is a lot of red-tape too in private education institutions. Don't be fooled thinking that the private sector is more efficient in their work. We private academicians have to do a lot of paperwork too. However, I would agree with you that private sector education institutions are working towards challenging the public universities for grants and better academic standing because of strong influences and pressures from their foriegn partners and the acceptance of the reality that education is not a business but a social service, by making lower profits and or breaking even. There have been arrangements for private education institutions academics to be given less workload if they are doing research and has gotten a grant for themselves. They are these arrangements now and it is a matter of time to see private education institutions being up to par or to better than public university in terms of research and development.

The government has given a lot of opportunities for public universities to improve through grants and allocations but the standards are still appalling. However, with external pressures from private education institutions, they might buck up one day!"

The reader also gave another example in a subsequent email with regards to a certain unhealthy practice at some of our local universities:

"There is another monkey business going on in university regarding to retirement. A lot of lecturers before they retire are given promotions resulting a several pay scale jumps thus upon retiring, he collects a high "pencen". It is ridiculous because it is not based on merits that he got the promotion but as a farewell gift. It happens to a lot of academic staff in the university who has retired. Although not formally admitted but openly practised."

Not a pretty picture at all for our institutions of higher learning...