University of Malaya - “A Picture is worth a Thousand Words”

More than 2,500 years ago, Confucius said “A Picture is worth a Thousand Words”. I have just seen such a picture. It tells why a great misfortune has befallen the nation’s premier university, University of Malaya (UM), which earned international acclaim in the sixties as a world-class university.

When self-respecting academicians, whether in UM or outside, and the country are still reeling from Friday’s release of the Times Higher Education Supplement (THES) World University Ranking, which saw UM plunge by 80 places from 89th to 169th position among the Top 200 universities, the UM Vice Chancellor was engaged in the single-minded passion of putting up seven billboards in the campus glorifying the university’s “fall from grace”!

More than one photograph have just been emailed to me by an outraged member of the University of Malaya community at the frivolity and petty-mindedness of the Vice Chancellor.

Welling up in me are an inchoate mix of feelings of deep and unfathomable sadness. frustration, disgust, anger, outrage and other indescribable emotions at seeing the wanton destruction of a great Malaysian institution. I do not believe I am alone awashed with such emotions seeing the photographs.

I am at a loss for words. Let the picture speak its thousand words!