Where is the quantum leap for education?

MY term as the fifth vice chancellor of Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM) ended late last month when I turned 60. 

It was almost 11 years (short of two months) ago that I first received a succinct instruction “to turn around the university” from the then Education Minister Tan Sri Musa Mohamed. 

The directive was timely since I was privileged to be appointed on the eve of the new millennium, transiting the 21st century. 

The catch word then was change, change, change! 

After all, we were betting on a new century that would see the emergence of what is variously labelled as the post-industrial age, knowledge era or the innovative millennium. 

Whatever it is called, change is not expected to be incremental. It is quantum in nature. 

It is transformational — exactly what is symbolically required to “turn things around” — except that it is easier said than done. 

For a popular and emotive sector such as education, it becomes even harder to make it happen. 

A United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation publication dated 1996 noted: “Education is still living in the past because its present social context is totally different from the situation for which it was designed. 

“Education must not only be adapted to the needs of our age, it must also make a real effort to look ahead some 25 years.” 

The statement resonates forcefully in my heart, but there are still too many uncertainties until we did a scenario plan looking beyond 2020. 

Where is the quantum leap for education given that all things around it are fast changing as well — socially, culturally, ecologically, technologically and economically? Where can it leap to? 

Some opted to jump on the bandwagon of “corpocracy” — a blend between corporatisation and bureaucracy, dominated by a culture alien to that of universities as a community of scholars. 

This has resulted in all things corporate beginning to insidiously invade academic institutions — from the dress code to language — as large corporations set the agenda for education. 

The so-called corporate divisions set up in several universities began to champion “corpocracy”. 

Eventually, corporate governance dominated, bringing with it all manner of “managerialism”, displacing the human governance that has been enriching universities — so much so that corporate culture became the norm that gradually shaped the character of a new academic ethos across the world. 

To many, these are the so-called world-class institutions. 

The academic community is based on a culture of trust and collegiality precisely because knowledge cannot be managed in the corporate sense without distorting it. 

It cannot be subjected to managerial processes of the corporate world! 

In other words, “managerialism” presupposes that there is very little difference in running a university from, say, an advertising agency or an oil rig. 

That organisations have more similarities than differences is the underlying assumption, and so the performance of all entities can be optimised by the application of generic, “tick-box ” management tools and theories. 

How do we “turn around” a university if we cannot change the way it is perceived and if it is “managed” in a manner completely foreign to how it ought to be and function? 

“Corpocracy” and “managerialism” will continue to push tertiary institutions closer towards market-orientation and reforms characterised by today’s profit-and-loss paradigm. 

I am concerned that the educational milieu is averse to meaningful changes that are now dominated economically and politically rather than academically. 

It was against this tide that I decided to regard the university as an emerging civil society rather than a corporate entity as it were. 

The emphasis, in contrast, is on the differences rather than similarities, and that generic one-size-fits-all approach. 

Indeed, authorities such as Warren Bennis and Hallum Movius acknowledged in The Chronicle of Higher Education (March 17, 2006) that universities have undergone "a sea of change” that makes them “among the most difficult organisations in the world to lead". 

Yet many are too blinkered to realise this when they insist that tertiary institutions be treated simply like any other organisation in a mechanistic way. 

It is this state of affairs that calls for a university to be treated as a civil society before it can be “turned around” into what it once was — a proud community of scholars. 

The writer is the former Vice Chancellor of USM.