"Grading" Private Colleges

We've discussed the issue of university rankings quite a bit on this blog. We've proposed that we should come up with a more objective way of ranking universities, both public and private, within Malaysia. It is interesting to note that the Ministry of Higher Education is going to publish its "grading" of private colleges soon as a means of providing more information for parents to make more informed choices about these private colleges.

According to a Star report last week, the Minister for Higher Education, Mustapa Mohamed, announced that private colleges or IPTS will give given one of three grades - A, B or C. The factors influencing this grading include the "location, facilities and quality of lecturers". He also noted that "Private institutions that fall under Grade C category will receive a warning of a possible revoking of their license unless they improved on their “poor” areas."

The issue of private colleges / university colleges is a perennial favorite of Tony's. While I am equally concerned in regards to "fly-by-night" operations which operates out of shophouses and can "close-shop" overnight, I'm a little more optimistic in regards to the potential of the more established IPTS such as Sunway, Taylors, INTI, HELP and SEGI (just to name a few). I think that as the market for private higher education in Malaysia grows and competition increases, the pressure for differentiation grows as well. Private colleges / university colleges will have to compete harder to attract students, both locally and from overseas, and to do so they will have to compete on all levels including providing the necessary facilities (computers, libraries, athletic facilities) and an improve quality of teaching.

Granted, this process may take a while since these private institutions of higher learning are primarily driven by the profit motive (which is not necessarily bad) and have not felt the need to become full fledge research universities making real intellectual contribution to the wider academic world. But I don't think this situation will last that long. Already, with the entry of Monash, Sunawy and the Nottingham campus in Semenyih, we have two internationally renowned research universities in Malaysia. Hopefully, universities such as these also bring along the research infrastructure and culture that is so crucial towards creating a well regarded research university environment.

I think that this "grading" system by the Ministry, if implemented well, could only work to create more competition between the private institutions of higher learning. Those in the "C" cateory will be forced to improve their infrastructure - both hardware and software. Those in the "A" category would also want to find ways of differentiating themselves from the other institutions in the same category.

The only worry I have is in regards to the methodology / criteria used by the Ministry. In another Star report, a senior vice-president of an IPTS, who declined to be named said the lack of transparency in the list of criteria was worrying many IPTS operators. “We laud the move to grade us but we had requested that the criteria be made transparent since the beginning and the ministry still has not given us any information. “The criteria needs to be clear so that colleges are not wrongly categorised,” he said.

The grading scheme is a learning process. There will be some initial complaints from some of the IPTS. The Ministry, hopefully, will respond to the feedback, give clarifications and improve on its methodology for future "gradings". The Ministry would do well to examine ranking systems that have been used in other countries (namely the US and the UK) and adopt best practices that will suit the local context. I'm sure that Tony and I would be scrutinizing the details of such a "grading" scheme to check if the categories and categorization makes sense (remember classifying Indians and Chinese as "foreigners" in our public universities).

One of the by-products, hopefully, of such a "grading" report is that more information such as the student-teacher ratio, the % of lecturers with Masters or PhDs, the library holdings, computer facilities can be disseminated to the public so that parents can make more informed choices. (Maybe through mediations such as this blog?!)

In the meantime, here's to hoping that the Ministry will come up with some sort of "grading" or ranking system for our public universities as well.