Going beyond impact

Professor Tan Sri Dato' Dzulkifli Abdul Razak
My View - The Sun Daily
April 28, 2015

AROUND the time the Malaysian Education Blueprint (Higher Education) was launched by the prime minister, the home minister reportedly spoke on the aspirations of the government to be more open and enable the public to give feedback or criticism towards the setting up of an administration which is transparent and responsible. This resonates with aspirations voiced out in the blueprint about giving greater latitude and autonomy to our universities.

Sir Leszek Borysiewicz, professor and vice-chancellor of Cambridge University, deemed this idea as "non-negotiable" when he delivered the keynote address on the role of 21st century university at the 2015 International Exhibition and Conference in Higher Education in Riyadh recently.

The four-day event, officiated by Saudi Arabia's minister of education, Dr Azzam al-Dakhil, saw more than 400 participating universities and academic institutions from different countries, including Malaysia, but largely from US and Europe.

Borysiewicz citing the university's mission statement emphasising on "contributing to society" reiterated the point that university and society are closely intertwined. This he elaborated by focusing on three aspects to educate, create and innovate. The first includes access and relevance so that students are not educated just for the short-term but the "unpredictable future" that "must go beyond these basic functions of training and ensuring employability" – rather to incubate global citizens. Succinctly, a university should not be training for the jobs that exist today, but educating for the challenges that will exist in the future. It is a matter of "how" to think rather than "what" to think.

To create such a university, it is important to highlight the contributions made through research, which according to George Porter, former president of the Royal Society, is simply about "applied" and "not yet applied" – in place of the usual "basic" or so-called "blue sky" research. What matters most is solving human problems in the human context where the scientific and technological approaches are some of the many attempts to look for solution(s). This emphasises the role of the non-sciences in contextualising the solutions complemented by humanities to find better responses in a trans-disciplinary way.

This means to innovate is to make discoveries either by design, serendipity or geography. Seen this way, discovery is a contribution to society in a special way as exemplified by Watson and Crick in 1953 when they pioneered the discovery of the DNA double helix at Cambridge. This has allowed many more discoveries to unscripted problems that are plaguing humanity. However one condition is non-negotiable: academics must be empowered to act without fear or favour.

To this he asserted: "I believe that we must fiercely defend the right to carve out a space for intellectual enquiry that will not be obviously or immediately impactful. Universities need the autonomy and flexibility to make decisions for themselves. The truth is that we never know how today's 'blue skies' research will turn into tomorrow's innovation."

"Non-negotiable too is the freedom of inquiry (thought and expression) which is a core value at Cambridge. It is the key to curiosity that seeks answers to many more unscripted problems, rather than narrowly focus on wealth creation. A utilitarian view of the value of universities is regrettably becoming more prevalent. As the sources of funding dry up, universities too often find themselves on the defensive, trying to justify their outputs."

The buzzword in universities across the world is "impact". In the UK, as much as 20% of government funding for universities now hinges on demonstrating impact. "It is easy to show that your work has impact if you are pioneering a technique for building bridges. It is not quite as easy to show the impact of your work if you are a philosopher, or a linguist," he lamented.

Simply put it is not only the investments in "things" that count, but more so on "people" and "diversity" that encourages conventions to be challenged to make space for new discoveries to grow. Open participation and widespread collaboration bringing together disciplines, societies and cultures as practised during the height of the Muslim endeavours to push the frontiers of knowledge is imperative. A fine balance between the various fields of knowledge was keenly observed as most of the scholars were polymaths unlike today where knowledge is rigidly silo-ed, often losing both the context and purpose. Thus "how to balance the weight of tradition and the imperative of renewal" is pivotal.

It implies that articulating the "right" questions is equally essential as looking for the "right" answers for which the environment must be non-threatening and fully autonomous. Only then can the minds of students blossom as crafted in one major shift in the education blueprint.

The writer spoke on Social Innovation at the Riyadh Conference. Comments: letters@thesundaily.com