I decide to blog again after more than one year disappeared from this virtual world.

A lot of things
happened to me since my last posting. I shall share them later, Insha’Allah.

This posting will be in English. I am taking this step to improve my English writing skill as well as to
sharpen my brain from being dull and rusty. I shall alternately write in Malay when I feel so.
Somehow, I am inspired by the way Che Det is blogging. It is so simple, less complicated, yet very
substantial and evident. Well, I have gone quite far from the topic.

University is a place for tertiary education. It is a noble institution generally meant for people to seek
and disseminate knowledge through various means. Malaysia as one of the advanced developing
countries is currently having 20 public universities and hundreds of private colleges in which the
number is still mushrooming.

Question arises on the role of those universities whether or not such institutions deliver what they
are supposed to do. Or our universities nowadays are merely just like secondary school or even
worst, primary school where lecturer gives lecture and students listen to the lecture, submit papers
of assignment, sit for exams, get good results and that is it.

I had the opportunity to be in a discussion with the Vice Chancellor of Universiti Sains Malaysia,
Professor Tan Sri Dato’ Dzulkifli Abdul Razak on the Accelerated Program of Excellence (APEX) last
Sunday’s night.

He quoted that, besides being an institution for dissemination of knowledge, university should
function bigger than that by making the acquired knowledge applicable and capable of bringing
behavioural changes and subsequently change one’s life to a better level.

One of the forgotten roles of a university is to making better the life of the people it serves. There is
no point of having a good ranking but peoples around suffer from poverty, illiteracy, social disorder
and what not.

University must also remains neutral if not staying apart from politics and business as only the
university knows what the best is for its community and the people it serves. In other words, there
should be a twist in this by letting the ‘poor’ to write the rules from themselves rather than blindly
following whatever rules passed by the ‘rich’ which are misappropriate for their interest.

The dogma of publish-or-perish is resulted from key performance indicators (KPI) of the tangible
elements. Lecturer and researcher have to sit on a blazing seat and up to certain extent are burnt
out. Indeed, the tangibles elements are important for high value flagship.

Things like publication, paper presentation etc are part of academia. But, too much pressure would
lead to unwanted circumstances such as issue of integrity. The best example is the case involving a
Korean Scientist known as Hwang Woo-Suk. Unfortunately, students are also experiencing the same
phenomena. The world of perfection pushes them to the edge of plagiarism just to be among
highest achievers.

One obvious matter that our universities are lacking of is the intangible elements. There is no such
thing as KPIs for that particular subject matter. Question of integrity, ethic, honesty, faith (Iman),
oneness with the unlucky among society, patriotism and many more are far from discussion and
what more assessment. These are the roots of the tree that fruit those tangible elements. Any
rottenness underneath the ground costs great waste and loss to the nation.

Therefore, the process of transforming higher education towards sustainable tomorrow demands
serious effort and holistic approach. Sometimes, it needs to flow counter-currently in order to
correct the flaws. USM must lead the way forward even some others would prefer to do their
business as usual.