The new Higher Education Minister Mustapah Mohammed plans to overhaul the country's higher education system. Towards this objective, the government intends to amend several legislation such as the Universities and University Colleges Act 1971, instituting a grading system for the institutions of higher learning and improving the National Higher Education Fund (PTPTN).
While these are important moves, however, they by themselves will not make much impact on the qualitative improvement of the higher education system. Having been in the Malaysian academic for nearly 25 years, I would like to suggest that the minister takes a broader and more systematic perspective on the improvement of the higher educational system.
First and fundamentally, he should attempt to take a bold approach to de-racialise the higher education system by ensuring that more competent and deserving non-Malays are hired as academic staff and given the appropriate leadership positions. Presently, non-Malays constitute a very small component of the academic staff in public universities besides facing all kinds of racial discrimination in terms of academic and administrative appointments.
Second, the prevailing mentality of maintaining Malay hegemony or dominance (Ketuanan Melayu) should cease; such an attitude has not contributed in any meaningful sense to the development a well-balanced academic and intellectual culture in the universities in Malaysia. Moreover, this idea of ensuring Malay dominance in the public sector in general and universities in particular has negative implications for the participation of the non-Malay ethnic segment of the population. It would be futile to talk about improving the higher educational system in Malaysia if structural obstacles continue to be perpetrated against the non-Malays.
Third, public universities in Malaysia despite their impressive physical growth have hardly any academic or intellectual autonomy. How the present minister is going to bring about this much needed autonomy remains to be seen. To provide the environment for the development of autonomy, the government should take steps to ensure that the leadership positions in public universities be determined by the establishment of independent boards or commissions with little or no governmental interference. Such bodies should consider candidates for senior positions such as vice-chancellors purely on academic or scholastic merit. However, the present criteria seems to be determined by political loyalty to the ruling regime in general and whether potential candidates are active Umno members in particular.
Fourth, merely changing or amending the present legislation can hardly make a dent in improving the system of higher education as these laws are reflective of the larger political, economic and social reality in Malaysia. So the question is not so much the laws themselves, but whether the government can adopt bold and progressive ideas for changes in academia.
Mustapha Mohammed might have good intentions, but I think he, like his earlier predecessors, is pretty naive about the state of affairs in the education system or pretends that legislative changes are the only ones necessary. Nothing can be further from the real truth. Overhauling the education system or any other sub-system requires fundamental and far-reaching changes to the nature of the present political and economic system. As long as the present ruling regime intends to ensure Malay hegemony in the public sector (including the maintenance of the present education system) as a Malay-Muslim preserve, it is doubtful that the higher education system could be improved.
It is rather sad that after more than four decades of independence, non-Malays are finding difficult to find a meaningful place in the country's educational system. They have been denied entry or participation on mere ascriptive criteria. Citizenship makes no sense for non-Malay/non-Muslim Malaysians.
