The reason for this is made doubly clear by best-selling author Peter Fleming, a professor of Organisation Studies, in his book, Dark Academia: How universities die (Pluto, 2021), released earlier this year.
Based on experiences in developed countries, he explored the dark side of modern universities to reveal cracks in the ivory tower, arguing that there is "a strong link between the neoliberalisation of higher education over the last 20 years and the psychological hell now endured by its staff and students".
While academia was once considered the best job in the world — one that fosters autonomy, craft, intrinsic job satisfaction and vocational zeal — he alleged that one would be hard-pressed to find a lecturer who believes that now. Remarkably, this observation resonates well with many more universities that are not labelled "ivory towers".
These are in stark contrast to the "optimism" expressed by BS, especially in relation to employers and students' employability. The fact remains that employability is on a downward spiral like never before. This cannot be ignored!
Here, Fleming is more instructive when he delved into the "overly hierarchical world to bring out the hidden underbelly of the neoliberal university", the new metrics-obsession (read: ranking), commercialisation, the rise of managerialism, students as consumers, the market (competitive) individualism leading "societal contradiction" and the "edu-factory logic" that BS seems to be oblivious about.
As Fleming aptly noted, all these are beyond the brochures of smiling students, and lingering misconceptions of intellectual life in the ivory tower. He recognises that time has almost run out to reverse this decline to fix the broken system.
A far cry from what BS is trying to persuade the universities, especially the gullible ones, continue playing the ranking game.
The writer, an NST columnist for more than 20 years, is International Islamic University Malaysia rector