Protemp Group of Companies

Universities must be allowed more leeway to experiment and to innovate if we are to produce well-balanced graduates with professionalism, idealism, wisdom and vision.

A UNIVERSITY is a temple of learning and a storehouse of the knowledge and wisdom of the past. It is a receptacle of art, culture and science and a mirror of humanity’s great heritage. 

It is a laboratory for testing out a new vision of the future. It is, or ought to be, a place where new ideas about our social, cultural, political and economic life are allowed to germinate.

In contemporary society, preparing students for the job market and production of enough professionals and technocrats for the industries are regarded as the main reasons for a university’s existence. Actually these are not the only goals of an institution of higher learning.

If a university is to be true to its worth, it must provide holistic education and produce well-balanced graduates who have professionalism as well as idealism; knowledge as well as wisdom; an understanding of the realities as well as a vision of what ought to be.

If universities merely supply technically sound but morally neutral human cogs for the industrial wheel, that may contribute to high production figures but will not lead to enlightened development of human capital or of society.

In Malaysia, all public universities, other than the International Islamic University (which is a company under the Companies Act) are created by the Yang di-Pertuan Agong under laws specially passed to govern institutions of higher learning.

Universities are not departments or units of federal ministries. They have a legal personality of their own. They have visions and missions that are independent of political policies. They have a historical tradition that predates the bureaucratic machinery that controls them.

The university’s position as an independent entity requires a legal framework that permits initiative, enterprise and autonomy and that balances these liberating factors with responsibility, answerability and accountability.

From 1957 to 1971, the Government permitted the universities a fair degree of autonomy even though the universities then, as now, were largely funded by the taxpayer.

In the 70s, due to disruptive student activism, bureaucratic control over university appointments and the core activities of universities became the norm. The instrument for this control was the Universities & University Colleges Act 1971 (Act 30), generally referred to as AUKU.

The spirals of history are in motion again. In the last few years, we have begun to dream dreams of becoming the regional hub of education, achieving world class status, producing Nobel laureates, emphasising research and innovation, developing links with industries, commercialising our findings and generating more funds.

A realisation is growing that universities must be allowed more leeway to experiment and to innovate. The conferment of “research university” and “apex” status, procedures for self accreditation and “one-line budgets” are steps in that direction. AUKU was amended in 2009 to enlarge the powers of the universities.

Though not well understood, the legal position today is that all universities are invested with a fair amount of operational independence in the areas of education, administration and finance.

A university is a corporate entity distinct from the Government. It has vast powers to make educational decisions, regulate staff and student affairs, commercialise its research findings, enter into contracts and, with the permission of the Minister, undertake commercial and entrepreneurial activities, set up trusts, companies and corporations.

Sadly, between the law in the book and the law in action, there is a wide hiatus. All public universities have very little income of their own and rely mostly on Parliament’s annual “grants in aid” for operational and development expenses.

As parliamentary allocations are channelled through the Higher Education and Finance ministries, senior officers in these ministries attach many strings to them even though no law specifically authorises them to do so.

A great deal of administrative regulation of the universities by the civil service has no legal basis and is based on history, custom, extra-legal policies and acquiescence by university administrators.

There is a general misunderstanding in the top echelons of the civil service that universities are government departments and university employees are government servants to whom civil service circular can be applied.

Actually, universities have a separate legal persona of their own and their employees are servants of their universities and not of the federal government.

Despite this legal theory, the deeply entrenched and virtually unquestionable dogma is that the Prime Minister’s Department, JPA, and Finance and the Higher Education ministries are entitled to issue periodic circular, directives and instructions to all institutions of higher learning.

Due to the weight of tradition, university administrators tamely comply with this practice. Bureaucracy triumphs. The law takes a back seat.

The long list of do’s and don’t’s includes directives on financial, personnel and academic matters. How many staff may be hired or promoted and on what terms? At what rate must consultants be paid? What courses may be launched? What goods and equipment may be requisitioned, at what price and from whom? How many tenders must be invited?

Almost all the above matters are legally within the university’s powers but have been administratively snatched away and transferred to the higher echelons of the federal bureaucracy.

What can be done to bridge this gap between theory and reality?       

University managements must take concerted action to organise seminars and colloquiums for their top brass to acquaint them of the complex socio-legal position.

Once the university community is sensitised to the legal issues, dialogues can then be held between university managements and the elite of the civil service to understand each others’ views and to examine the law.

Perhaps efforts will then materialise to make the imperatives of the law become the aspirations of the university community.

All University Boards should strategise ways of securing autonomy and promoting law reform in areas where it is needed. Perhaps the Council of Vice Chancellors and the Council of Professors could play a similar role of convincing the Minister, the Chief Secretary to the Government, and the concerned Chief Secretaries and Directors General to support the quest for operational autonomy with accountability.

There must be efforts to restore legal powers that exist under AUKU but have become eclipsed by administrative and extra legal restraints.

The view must be promoted that universities, as statutory bodies, are semi-autonomous legal entities that are akin to Government Linked Companies, quangos and public corporations and are invested with a fair amount of independence subject only to general policy.

Instead of pre-decisional fetters the ministry should enforce post-decisional accountability.

In the long term AUKU should be replaced with a new Universities Act that distils the wisdom of similar legislation around the world.

The Peguam Negara’s advice should be sought on whether civil service regulations applicable to the “public services” also apply to universities?

In sum, the struggle for university autonomy will be long and painful. Forces of status quo cannot be expected to give up their de factopowers despite what the law says.

Freedom is never given on a platter. It has to be sought. In the interest of this country’s educational future this struggle has to be waged with passion and persistence.

> Prof Datuk Dr Shad Saleem Faruqi is Professor Emeritus at UITM and Visiting Professor at USM.