How to increase the % of PhDs

Tony has started the ball rolling on the new UM VC. I'd like to chime in by continuing to give the new VC some additional friendly advice, on top of what I gave here and here.

I'm glad that Tony didn't refer to Datuk Rafiah Salim as Datuk Dr since he rightly recognizes that an honorary doctorate doesn't merit an official title of Dr. I won't prejudge the fact that she herself doesn't have a PhD even though one of the objectives stated by the 9MP is that 60% of the academic staff in public universities should have PhDs by 2010. Although it is a plus to have a PhD from a good school, I think it's probably more important to have the political will and skill to introduce and implement purposeful structural changes given the current state of our public universities.

I will, however, venture to give some friendly advice as to how we can increase the % of academic staff with PhDs. This applies to the larger context of public universities in Malaysia though UM is perhaps better placed to strive forward on this front given its history and resources.

Academic staff in our public universities who do not have PhDs usually fall into 2 categories. The first category comprise of those academics who are over the age of 40 and have been lecturing or teaching for a long time. They are too old to pursue their PhDs and have served too long to 'let go', in a manner of speaking. Some of them might be great lecturers and teachers but are probably past their time in terms of cutting edge research in their respective fields. There's not much that a VC can do for the staff in this category except to give incentives for them to retire early.

The second category is where most of the 'action' is. These are lecturers who usually hold degrees from our public universities, under the age of 40 and have been lecturing within the system for a few years. Most, if not all of them, are waiting to obtain government / university funding to go abroad to do their PhDs. From my conversations with some of my friends in our public universities, the path to a PhD goes something like this.

You start off by doing pretty well academically at a local public university. Then, you apply for a position of a lecturer at a public university. Some lecturers would already have obtained their Masters degree, usually from a local public university. Others would take their masters as they are lecturing. They will usually be 'confirmed' after an average of 3 years or so. Only after they are confirmed will they be in the running to apply for funding to do their PhDs, usually overseas. But because funding is so limited, only a small number of these lecturers ever get to take the next step to do their PhDs. You can stay as a lecturer for more than 10 years without getting your chance to go abroad. There's an age limit of 39 or 40 over which you will no longer be funded. So as that deadline approaches, it is increasingly likely that you will be funded to pursue your PhD.

Let's reflect on the incentives that this system produces. Firstly, you won't apply to a PhD program until you get the go-ahead from your department or from your university because even if you get into a PhD program, you might not be able to go if you don't have funding. If you're really ambitious and politically savvy, you'd approach the right 'channels' to expedite the process of obtaining funding. If you're comfortable staying at the position of being a lecturer without a PhD, you'd sit and wait and sit and wait and hope the funding will come ... eventually.

With this kind of system in place, is it any wonder that we have problems boosting up the % of academic staff with PhDs? Think about this for a moment. We're still expanding the size and intake of our public universities. This means that we have to keep hiring lecturers without PhDs to keep up with our pace of expansion. But the funding for these lecturers to do their PhDs is not keeping pace with the hiring of these lecturers. Let's say that our public universities hire lecturers without PhDs at a rate of growth of 10% per year and that the % growth in the number of lecturers being sent overseas to do their PhDs is only 5% per annum. You do the math. I'd be surprised if the 60% target is reached by 2010 at the rate we're going.

Within this system, there's also very little incentive to look for your own personal funding to do your PhD since (1) you can't be fired from your job as a lecturer (2) the government / university 'guarantees' funding for you (at some unspecified time before you turn 40). So there's no need to apply to US universities where private funding is much more easily available becase (1) those very hard to get into (2) it takes longer compared to UK and Australian universities (3) the government only guarantees you 3 years of funding.

Furthermore, there's this bureaucratic wall which says that individual lecturers cannot apply for the Fulbright (US) or Chevening (UK) scholarships on their own. They have to be 'sponsored' by either the university or the JPA. Imagine how keen the JPA or the university is to do the additional paperwork of vetting through suitable candidates. Imagine how keen potential candidates are to go through that lengthy process without a guarantee that the university or the JPA will 'sponsor' you. It is hardly surprising to me that most of the recipient of scholarships such as the Chevening and the Fulbright are private candidates with little or no affliation with the public universities. Talk about disincentives.

OK, I think I've outlined the discintives sufficiently. What then are some possible solutions? I have a few:

(1) Send potential PhD candidates to countries where the cost of obtaining a PhD is much lower. Instead of the US, the UK and Australia, our public varsities should look for alternative institutions which are cheaper in countries such as China, India, or even Singapore! This way, more PhD candidates can be funded through smaller amounts instead of relying on one huge lump sum to fund one or two candidates. To give you an idea of the cost of funding a PhD candidate, let me use myself as an illustrative example.

I just received my funding letter for my third year at Duke. My fees for 2 semesters round up to $33,000 (all figures are in US dollars). My stipend including health insurance comes up to $18,000. That adds up to $51,000 per year (not including summer funding) or approximately RM180,000 per year or RM900,000 for 5 years. If UM were my sponsors, they would probably pay for 3 years and give me a lower stipend. That would probably still come up to around RM150,000 a year or RM450,000 for 3 years. For half a million ringgit, UM could probably sponsor 3 PhD students in NUS or 5 in New Delhi.

The potential problem with this approach is that UM (or any other local varsity) would still have to incentivize their lecturers to apply to cheaper alternatives. If I were a lecturer, I would definitely prefer to be sponsored to go to a university in the US or the UK than one in China or India or Singapore. What's in it for the lecturers? My response is the 2nd proposal.

(2) Streamline the application process such that potential candidates who have been 'confirmed' are forced to apply with 3 years, let's say, to PhD programs in different universities in different countries. Pay for the application process. Set an amount of sponsorship that will be given but set this at a relatively low level so that candidates are incentivized to apply to programs that will give them financial assistance in addition to what UM is giving them. It means that if you want to go to a more expensive school in US, you need to find additional funding on your own. If you can't, then you have to go to a lower cost alternative. Set a time frame for these lecturers to receive and to take an offer. For example, you may feel that at your first try, none of the universities which have accepted you are up to your expectations. You still have, let's say, 2 more application cycles to go before you're forced to accept an offer.

Related to this streamlining process is to offer incentives for lecturers to seek funding from scholarship boards such as the Fulbright or Chevening. This way, there's a natural weeding out process where the best candidates apply for good universities in the US and UK and get private funding from these universities and scholarship boards. UM will top up the shortfall in funding (up to a maximum) and if private funding is sufficient to cover fees and costs, the basic sponsorship money from UM comes as a 'bonus' so that these well qualified students are not penalized for their efforts.

(3) 'Let go' of lecturers who obviously don't have the aptitude or desire to do and finish a PhD. This is extremely difficult to do since a job with the university is considered an 'iron rice bowl'. Some of these lecturers could be shifted to do more administrative jobs and hence decrease the denominator in the calculation of academic staff with PhDs. But if there are lecturers who can't teach, can't research and can't do administrative jobs, then, they should be 'let go'. There's no easy way out of this. An academic culture of excellence cannot be inculcated if the lecturers or professors themselves do not have to excel at what they are supposed to do i.e. teach and conduct research.

My basic thrust is this - there has to be incentives to push people to do their PhDs. The incentives should be in the form of carrots and sticks. You'd be amazed by what people are willing to do given the right incentives. The largest group of international students at the graduate level at Duke come from China and I would say that over 90% of them have obtained funding from Duke in one way or another. Most of these scholars I've spoken to received little help from their professors or universities in China in the application process. One applied to 20 schools in the US and obtained fully funded offers from 5 of them before deciding on Duke. There are about approximately 1,500 PhD students from China in Duke alone, mostly in the hard sciences. Currently, there are 2 Malaysian PhD students in Duke, including myself. Both of us are fully funded by Duke. I would hazard a guess that there are probably more PhD students from China in Duke than there are overseas PhD students currently sponsored by all of the public universities in Malaysia. I would be really happy to stand corrected on this but I suspect that I won't be.

Right now, the process of getting non-Phd lecturers in our public universities to do their PhDs is screwed up - it doesn't motivate people to seek private funding, it doesn't give people incentives to apply to programs without a guarantee of funding, it doesn't punish people who can't teach or do research and so on. People as rational creatures respond to incentives. The tricky part is to implement structures that will allow these incentives to work.