Years ago, I used to have a notion of universities as places where the search for truth, beauty, knowledge and enlightenment would be freely pursued in all its glory… today, older and wiser, I find myself sadly agreeing with a recent article in "The Star", http://thestar.com.my/services/printerfriendly.asp?file=/2006/5/6/nation/14153815.asp&sec=nation
Since I don’t know how long The Star keeps its archives online, I’ve reproduced the article below as well, just for archival purposes.
Another thought: despite claims of wanting to produce a Nobel Prize winner by 2020, this country over-emphasizes "commercializable research" and does not provide good support for truly revolutionary, groundbreaking work to be done.
By ZAHAROM NAIN
THE buzzwords doing the rounds in Malaysian universities these days
appear to be “research grants”. Currently, the term is to local
academia what “reality TV” is to local television.
And, apparently, even more so now that it has been announced that four
public universities have been conferred “research university” status
under the 9th Malaysia Plan.
Indeed, step into any staff canteen in local public universities and
you’re bound to hear talk about who’s applied for or received some
research grant or another. It has become a veritable industry in
itself.
So, we now get the often comical, frequently disturbing, sight of
budding academics, newly-acquired postgraduate degree in hand, being
enticed into research groups set up by more senior staff to vie for the
grants available.
And since points are awarded for getting hold of these grants, and
these points count towards academic promotion exercises, it is not
surprising that many are swept by this tide of grant applications.
In theory, this is fine, of course, and should be encouraged. Research,
after all, is – or should be – the lifeblood of any decent, worthwhile
academic and higher education institution.
But then there’s research and there’s research.
Put differently, there’s good research that’s path-breaking,
publishable (preferably in international, refereed journals and books),
often of benefit to society.
And there’s rather mediocre research, repeating previous equally bad
research, publishable only in secondary school magazines, and of
virtually zero benefit to the wider society, though often of some
benefit to the commercial companies sponsoring the research.
As if to compound this situation further, a myth has been circulating
in a number of local universities – and now apparently assumed to be
fact – that one needs a research grant in order to conduct research.
Hence, the number of research grants one holds becomes the yardstick for measuring one’s credibility as a researcher.
Indeed, there was a recent university promotion exercise where the
candidate was almost disqualified because he had held only one research
grant in the three years he had been employed.
This despite the fact that he had a few academic publications to his name.
This emphasis on the number of research grants is all hogwash, of course.
There are tons of research that can be – and have been – carried out in
the social sciences and humanities that require the bare minimum – if
at all – of funding.
And many of these have been published in the most distinguished of publications.
Conversely, there have been – and continue to be – many local academics
who hold numerous research grants but have come up with virtually
nothing of value, save the oft-repeated “unpublished research report”.
And what is frightening is that this genre of “unpublished research
report” is fast becoming the norm and no longer the exception in
Malaysia.
But this, of course, shouldn’t surprise any of us if the mindset – nay,
the culture – in academia is one that privileges quantity over quality,
form over substance, the monetary value of grants over the quality of
the research.
Indeed, it appears that the ultimate goal among many young academics –
at least in the humanities and social sciences – these days is to
garner as many research grants as possible, and the value of the final
output be damned.
Here, the priority is to produce, at most, a research report for the
sponsor, without entertaining any serious thought of coming up with
good, publishable findings.
More disappointingly, there’s even less thought about carving one’s own
academic niche and developing an area of interest that could be used to
guide one’s academic career.
Hence, we get the sad sight of fresh PhD holders in media studies
lining up to apply for grants from holiday resort companies wishing to
study how best to attract consumers to their resorts.
This tendency to think about doing research simply to get grants raises
serious ethical questions which Malaysian academics really need to
ponder over seriously in an era of internationalisation and
globalisation.
Among other things, this prevailing mindset detracts from the more
important aims of getting published and of serving society in its
widest sense.
And, often again these days, when the pressure of publishing finally
begins to bear on these individuals, they try to get around this
“hurdle” through rather disingenuous means.
The most common is to get their research assistants or the graduate
students they are supervising to write the papers, after which they add
in their names as co-authors.
“Co-writing” in this manner has become such a norm that it would,
indeed, be miraculous if a local academic conference were to go by
without such papers being presented.
And when this is queried at academic meetings, the excuse often given
is that co-writing in this way gives “academic exposure” for the
assistant or graduate student who is depicted as riding on the
reputation of the academic or professor – an academic or professor who
often hasn’t got any worthwhile intellectual reputation in the first
place.
Now, in the era of the 9th Malaysia Plan, in a period when research
universities are being conceived, perhaps it is time for concerned
local academics to call a spade a spade and speak out against such
malpractices, anti-intellectual thinking and manoeuvrings.
Failing which, the refrain, Cemerlang, Gemilang, Terbilang would surely ring a trifle hollow.
Zaharom Nain is an associate professor at the Centre for International Studies in Universiti Sains Malaysia
