Hashim Goes!

Yup. It's now confirmed. The tenure of Kapten Datuk Professor Dr Hashim Yaacob as the vice-chancellor of Universiti Malaya ends this Friday. Interestingly enough, the Star reported it first, instead of the New Straits Times who has been a bit more on the ball with the happenings in the higher education circle.

As blogged a couple of days back, we will miss Kapten Datuk Professor Dr Hashim Yaacob for all the things he has done for Universiti Malaya. Some of us wouldn't be particularly displeased about it :).

Anyway, that was the "good" news confirmed by the Minsitry of Higher Education. The less pleasing piece of news is that there is still no independent credible search committee which we have been clamouring for in sight. Apparently, a shortlist has been drawn up and is being evaluated by a committee headed by Minister of Higher Education, Datuk Mustapa Mohamad. The shortlist includes:

1. Prof Dr Mahani Zainal Abidin

She is currently the Higher Education Department deputy director-general (management sector). Prof Mahani was formerly head of the National Economic Action Council's special team on globalisation and a lecturer in UM's Economics Faculty. She was also on the UPM vice-chancellor shortlist back in December.

2. Datuk Rafiah Salim

She is currently the International Centre for Leadership in Finance executive director. Rafiah has served as dean of the UM Law Faculty and was assistant secretary-general for human resource management at the United Nations headquarters in New York from 1997 to 2002. She was also a Bank Negara assistant governor before joining the UN.

3. Prof Datuk Dr Sharifah Hapsah Shahabudin

She is currently the National Accreditation Board chief executive officer. Prof Sharifah Hapsah was formerly a lecturer with Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia's medical faculty and head of the ministry’s Quality Assurance Division from 2002 to early this year. She is also president of the National Council of Women’s Organisations. She also made it to the shortlist earlier for the vice-chancellor of Universiti Putra Malaysia.

Existing Deputy Vice-Chancellors of UM are:

4. Prof Datuk Dr Razali Agus (Student affairs and Alumni),

5. Prof Datuk Dr A. Hamid A. Hadi (Academic and International)

6. Prof Dr Muhamad Rasat Muhamad (Research and Innovation)

Other Potential Candidates:

7. Prof Datuk Dr Hassan Said

He is currently the Higher Education Management Department director-general. Again, he is on the shortlist for the UPM vice-chancellor just last December.

8. Prof Datuk Dr Mohd Amin Jalaludin

He is currently the UM medical faculty dean and the University Malaya Medical Centre director.

The unfortunate thing is that there appears to be little attempt to scour the world for the best talents to truly bring about change to our university system. The same people appear on the shortlist of candidates for all the vacancies for vice-chancellors in all our local public universities. It's either someone at the top of the Ministry of Higher Education hierachy or someone who is at the top of the particular university with the vacancy. The mechanism for shortlisting hardly inspires confidence of "world class" standards which we seek to badly.

Tok Pa, you did the right thing by deciding not to renew the contract for Kapten Datuk Professor Dr Hashim Yaacob which he did not deserve. However, you should take it a step further by delaying the appointment of the new vice-chancellor for UM, and instituting the independent search committee to select the best vice-chancellor to lead the premier university in Malaysia.