New UKM VC: Cause for Hope?

NST and the Star reported here and here that a new VC has been appointed for UKM. The new VC, Datuk Dr Sharifah Hapsah Syed Hassan Shahabudin, formerly the CEO of LAN or the National Accreditation Board has been on the radar screen of this blog for some time.

She was one of the six candidates on the shortlist to replace Prof Hashim Yaacob as the VC of UM as blogged by Tony here. She was passed up in favor of Datuk Rafiah Salim. When she takes up her position as the new VC of UKM, she'll be the second woman in Malaysia to hold that position.

Firstly, some notes about her background. The Star writes that "Dr Sharifah Hapsah graduated with a degree in Medicine from Universiti Malaya in 1973 and employed as a lecturer at UKM two years later. She also served as head of the medical studies department." NST writes that "From 1975 to 2002, Dr Sharifah Hapsah was a medical studies professor at UKM."

So unlike Datuk Rafiah, Dr. Sharifah actually has an academic background and received medical training. However, her academic record has been questioned by one of our readers here. A google scholar search or even a normal google search will reveal that she has not published anything substantial in her field of training which is medicine. Her latest publication is actually a jointly edited volume with Saran Kaur Gill untitled "Asian Women Leaders in Higher Education: Management Challenges for the New Millennium. Bangi, Malaysia: UNESCO & Centre for Academic Advancement, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia."

I've written about one of her UNESCO publications here and this particular publication deals specifically with the establishment of the Malaysian Qualifications Agency (MQA) and I was generally positive about the focus of her presentation.

I don't think that a VC has to be a brilliant academic (although a good publishing record to boost his or her credentials) to be a good VC (think Lawrence Summers, for example, the former President of Harvard). Prolific academics who have been well-published don't necessarily make good administrators. So I wouldn't hold Dr. Sharifah's poor publishing record against her. In fact, I'm pretty upbeat about her appointment.

The main reason is that she won't have any excuse of not knowing the standards that the Malaysian Qualifications Agency will set after it is established by an act of Parliament (this will happen fairly soon) since she was the one who authored those standards!

According to that paper presented by Dr. Sharifah at a UNESCO meeting, the three objectives of the MQA are:

1) Develop internationally benchmarked standards for the MQF
2) Assuring the standards of qualification and quality of delivery in both public and private institutions
3) Maintaining the MQF resiter and becoming the reference point for information on qualifications and QA and mutual recognition of qualifications

While we have to wait for the act of Parliament to examine the details of what the MQA is / will be, we can get the general gist of it from Dr. Sharifah's presentation. If the objectives above can be fulfilled, then I'm positive that the local universities will be the better for it.

Right now, Dr. Sharifah is in a strategic position to ensure that the university that she will soon oversee, UKM, will be the first to achieve the standards set by the MQA. I feel more hopeful that Dr. Sharifah would be in a better position to implement substantive change in UKM compared to Dr. Rafiah in UM. Perhaps this will spur greater competititon between the two universities. Only time will tell to see if one has left a longer lasting (and positive) legacy than the other.