Malaysian universities will never improve, and whatever improvement you see will not last. I will set out my reasons in a concise manner. So it is wise considering the Gov never revise their University's Lecturers salaries and benefits..
1) Staff are not hire on merit:
I've noticed that most of the new staff hired are Malays. There are very few Chinese and Indian staff on tenure track. In fact most of the non-Malays I came across are hired on contract. It does not take a genius to know that if you don't put people on tenure, they will not give their best. Its because that there was an unofficial quota.
And there is a lot of resistance from the junior Malay staff when non-Malays come in because they perceived the non-Malays are better researchers and academics and this tend to force non-Malay staff to go overseas, especially to Singapore so they do not want to waste their time in hiring non-Malay staff.
2) No research culture since promotion is not based on research:
Despite all the talk by the Minister, there is no research culture. Infact, most local academics are not interested in research. A few of the Malay academics say that they like group or cluster research because it is "easier". They don't go for excellence or individual research and the promotion is based on administrative work and "cables" to the Minister or VC.
In fact a few of them toldl me that good researchers are punished by the whole group because they make the others look bad or lazy. Thus no matter how good you are when you join, by putting you in a "research group" they are slowing the good ones down and before you know it, they become part of the group culture.
A retired Malay professor once mention that the most important criteria for promotion is "how you get along with people". He also told me if you are good, they will bring you down because if the universities have standards, then they cannot survive in their jobs. In his own words, more than 4/5 of the current university staff will never be able to get academic jobs in a real university.
3) Pettiness and Jealously:
The Malay culture is based in group behavior and gossip you guys can noticed that even academic staff took a lot of time in gossiping about nonsense. Most of the female academic staff used gossip to bring down capable people. For example, one Malay guy who just came back with his PhD had to endure a lot of gossip, all because one female academic staff complained that he did not hold a kenduri to celebrate his successful completion of PhD.
VC as an example, the Dean started telling other academic staff that "someone" did not "contribute enough" to the faculty. "Alpha" was under the impression that "Alpha" was there to do research and publish but for these people, who cannot do research, the priority was on social events. This Dean was not even an academic in the first place but was a civil servant before he was appointed Dean. All the academics he has appointed since he became Dean all come from his state and all are local graduates. So how to improve?
There are many more things I want to say but these are the main reasons why Malaysian universities have no hope of ever being world class. As long as everything is based on race, pettiness and not on merit, I cannot see a way out.
I am writing this not out of frustration, but to also show why local universities waste so much money joining the Geneva Exhibitions and the like (as reported in the newspapers). The
sad truth is when you have people who cannot publish in real academic journals, then they play silly games like join exhibitions.
The Local Academician who defended this practice would be laughed at if he was at a real university. In fact, to be frank, people like him cannot get a real academic job in Singapore , NZ or US. He is a symbol of what is wrong at local universities.
Overall, you have the blind leading the blind.
