More foreign students in UM? Part II

Bernama reported yesterday that the Minister of Higher Education, Shafie Salleh, will give 'greater focus' to the 'internationalization' of UM as a strategy to promote its international reputation. He's starting cautiously by only mentioning mentioning the recruitment of more foreigners at the post-graduate level. This is in contrast to what the VC was reported to have said earlier which was to open up 5% of places at the undergraduate level to foreigners. Shafie is wise to start at the post-graduate level since opening up places to foreigners at the undergraduate level will open up a huge can of worms and stir up great controversy.

Let me start of with some positives since we've been bashing the VC as well as Shafie quite a bit over the past week or so. In the same Bernama report, Shafie said that 5 local universities will be having joint PhD programmes with Imperial College (IC) of London starting next year. If this indeed materializes, I think it would be an excellent opportunity for our local varsities. Firstly, it would reduce the cost of obtaining a 'foreign' PhD since Malaysian students would not have to stay in London for any extended period of time and PhD school fees would presumably be much lower as well. Secondly, in a related point, the reduction in cost might allow more lecturers who are currently waiting to be sent abroad to do their PhDs, an opportunity to cut short that waiting period. Thirdly, Malaysian PhD students would be able to learn and benefit from the expertise of professors at IC, one of the top engineering schools in the UK, if not worldwide.

But the devil is in the detail. There's an old saying which goes something like 'Beware of Greek bearing gifts'. One has to examine what IC is getting out of this. There's no such thing as a free lunch and if this partnership is realized, one must see that it ends up being a win-win situation for both parties and not just the Malaysian government dishing out tons of money to IC for this partnership. One must also ensure that Malaysians who go through these PhD program actually get sufficient contact time with IC professors and not just have email contact or see them once or twice during the course of a year. Finally, one hopes that this partnership will actually result in a revamp and improvement in the training that a Malaysian PhD student gets and not just be a purely symbolic gesture.

Having this kind of partnership with foreign universities might be a strategic way of overcoming the lack of suitably qualified professors in our local universities. One would of course prefer that this shortcoming be overcome by better qualified locals but this is at least a short term measure to stop the bleeding.

Shafie is also wise in saying that it would be unwise to recruit too many foreign students at the taxpayer's expense. I am sure that many of use would prefer to see the taxpayer's funds put to uses which can more directly increase the quality of our universities like paying qualified lecturers a more competitive salary or better infrastructure for science labs and the like.

Many state universities in the US who have experienced cuts in their education budget that is funded by the state has also cut funding to PhD students, especially foreigners. I'm lucky because I'm in a private university that is very well-endowed. In the UK, most PhD programs do not offer scholarships to foreigners and many in fact charge foreign PhD students, especially those that are funded by their home governments.

Now, for the question marks. Shafie mentioned that he would ask the governments of Australia and New Zealand to encourage their students to "participate in credit transfer programmes with Malaysian universities such as UM". What makes Shafie think that Australian post-graduate students would want to have part of their post-graduate training in a local university in Malaysia especially when the expertise in Australia is so much better across the board? I can think of a few exceptions - in areas where local varsities have professors who have expert knowledge in the field that cannot be found in Australia or in areas which Malaysia has a comparative advantage in (study of tropical diseases, study of ethnic politics). But these are likely to be niche areas. If Shafie thinks he can market Malaysian universities to post-grad students in Australia, then kudos to him.

Unlike the IC arrangement, where IC post grad students are not expected to come to UM to get credits (at least to my understanding), this seems like another hare-brained idea with little chance of success (short of throwing money at Australian graduate students).

One of the key elements of a good PhD program is to have professors who excel in research. This is what distinguishes a research university, which UM is supposed to be, from a teaching university. Having more foreign post-graduates will not drastically improve a university's research or PhD program if the same professors are in charge of those programs.

If Shafie wants to develop UM into a research university in the long term, he should come up with a comprehensive plans which (1) gives incentives to professors to conduct research and to punish those who don't (2) provide avenues for professors to bid for competitive funding sources. The other stuff is just window-dressing.