University of Malaya campus turned into pasar malam site

At popular request, I am putting together the two Hashim Yaacob billboards on University of Malaya's world-class ranking when rated No. 89 last year and No. 169 last week. There is no sense of disappointment, regret or shame at UM's 80-place fall from the World's Top 200 Universities, as if it is nothing to be shocked or surprised about - even if UM falls out of the Top 200 List altogether.

I am not an UM alumnus. I do not know how UM alumni, lecturers and universities feel towards the seven giant billboards put up by Hashim Yaacob on Monday in the campus - one new and six refurbished ones. Let me share with you my feelings when I visited UM on the first day of Hari Raya Aidilfiltri on Thursday to check on the billboards.

I felt a sense of sacrilege - that the sacred precincts of academia had been violated by crass vulgarity and values which treated the campus as nothing very different from a pasar malam site, loudly blaring one's exaggerated wares!

Am I alone in feeling so?

Tomorrow, I will send an email to all Ministers to explain they should take collective responsibility for the disastrous plunge of University of Malaya (UM) and Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM) in the Times Higher Education Supplement (THES) World University Ranking 2005 on the Top 200 Universities, which saw UM falling 80 places from 89th to 169th position while USM fell more than 89 places from 111th position and got knocked out of the Top 200 Universities bracket altogether.

I will remind all the Ministers of the principle of collective ministerial responsibility for the deep and worsening higher education crisis, which would not permit anyone of them to distance himself from the higher education crisis and just blame the whole mess on one or two persons, such as the Higher Education Minister, Datuk Dr. Shafie Salleh and the Cabinet-rank Special Higher Education Envoy, Datuk Seri Effendi Norwawi.

It is for this reason why at the Cabinet meeting on Wednesday, Ministers must individually and collectively address the acute problem of Malaysia’s prolonged and worsening crisis of higher education, as well as the scandalous response of the University of Malaya Vice Chancellor Prof. Dr. Datuk Hashim Yaacob to the latest THES World University Ranking which made a national and international joke of UM as well as Malaysia.

At the June centennial celebrations of University of Malaya, Deputy Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak expressed the hope that University of Malaya could join the ranks of the world’s Top 50 Universities.

The Cabinet should realise that the challenge facing UM is not whether to achieve the breakthrough to be among the world’s Top 50 Universities, but to avoid suffering the fate of USM of being knocked out of the Top 200 Universities Ranking under the Ninth Malaysia Plan beginning next year.

The Parliamentary Opposition Leader’s Office tomorrow will seek an appointment for me to meet up with Shafie next week before Parliament reconvenes the following Monday on November 14 as I would like to know whether the Higher Education Minister has any fresh and new strategy to restore excellence, quality and standards to UM, USM and other public universities in the country as well the nation’s international standing and good reputation for our system of higher education.