UM moving? Probably not

In a report in BT on June 12th, it was speculated that "GUOCOLAND (Malaysia) Bhd, a property developer controlled by Tan Sri Quek Leng Chan, has made a bid to relocate University Malaya from Petaling Jaya to Sepang." This
report was met with objections from many quarters, including the PM and the DPM as well as the UM board and the UM alumni. With this kind of public outcry, it is likely that the rumors would remain exactly as that - pure speculation. For the sake of discussion, let's examine the pros and cons of moving UM to Sepang and redeveloping the current UM site into a commercial zone.

Let's start with the possible pros.

Firstly, moving UM to Sepang might be a good thing if brand new facilities (libraries, labs, internet connectivity etc...) could be built for UM as part of the agreement for 'turning over' its grounds in KL. Many of the buildings in UM are old and no amount of 'upgrading' can make these facilities 'world-class'.

Secondly, there is nothing which says that UM has to be located in KL. Many great universities of the world are not located in capital cities or even in big cities per se. Cambridge is a small, quiet little town in East Anglia, UK. Oxford is a slightly larger, industrial town, but a town of less than 500,000. Warwick university, an up-and-coming university in the UK is located about an hour from London.

Stanford is located in Paolo Alto, about an hour from San Francisco. Cornell, an Ivy-league university, is located in Ithaca, a rural area of New York state, about a 4 hour drive from New York city. Duke, where I'm at, is in Durham, a town of about 200,000. University of Michigan is at Ann Arbor, also a smallish town of about 100,000. ANU is located Canberra, while being the capital of Australia, isn't exactly a thriving metropolis, unlike Sydney or Melbourne. Sepang is only about an hour from KL and would presumably be located near Putrajaya, Cyberjaya and the KLIA.

This being said, I have to strongly disagree with moving UM from KL to Sepang for the following reasons.

Firstly, while there are many examples of good universities being located in smallish towns, almost every major city in the world has at least one university located in it. London has UCL, Kings, LSE, Imperial, City, and many others. Washington, DC, has George Washington, Johns Hopkins and Georgetown. Boston has Harvard, MIT, Boston College, Boston U, Fletcher and many others. New York has Columbia, NYU and many others. Sydney has UNSW and U Sydney. There is something to be said about the positive interaction from having a research university in the middle of a bustling, capital city - ties with industry; exposure to the intellectual and social atmosphere of a major city; greater employment opportunities; and so on.

Secondly, the cost of building new facilities and buildings for UM in Sepang would be prohibitively expensive, even if UM can be adequately compensated for giving up its grounds in the heart of KL. Many hundreds of millions of dollars have already been spent on new buildings and facilities in UM. It is likely that these facilities will be wasted if indeed the current UM grounds are turned into a commercial / residential area.

Thirdly, the reasons for relocating a university should not be dictated on purely commercial grounds. The emotional ties to the university, as exemplified by the outcry from the UM alumnus, should not be neglected. The historical significance of UM's location also should not be ignored.

I'm glad that this move would probably not occur given the political and social outcry emanating after these newspaper reports. But I'd like to end this post by highlighting the fact that UM has not leveraged its position as the premier and oldest university in the country and its location in the heart of KL. I'd like to illustrate this by giving one example.

I remember my time at LSE as being one where I had a pick of prominent speakers to listen to which included world leaders, head of central banks, prominent economists, activists and corporate leaders. Similarly, here in the US, many world leaders as well as corporate leaders would consider it their honor to speak at Harvard or Stanford or Columbia. These universities were considered as destination of choice for many of these world and corporate leaders. UM, as far as I know, doesn't hold the same kind of attraction for many world and corporate leaders who visit Malaysia. These world and corporate leaders are usually ushered to invitation only events usually in posh hotels or in convention centers. Even prominent academics such as the Royal Ungku Aziz Chair of Poverty Studies, Professor Jeffrey Sachs (more on him later in another post), has not managed to find time in his busy schedule to grace the halls of our premier university. So, as the outcry on moving UM dies down, it would do us well to examine how UM can leverage on its location in KL and why it has failed to do so in the past 30 years or so.