UMS: An enigma no more, perhaps

Sabah’s only public university tries to bridge an east-west divide

No one can fault him. Academics and east Malaysian politicians before him have often driven home the fact that Sabah joined neighbouring Sarawak, Singapore* and peninsular Malaya as equal partners to form Malaysia in 1963. Since then, state and federal ties have been enigmatic and problematic even during the best of times. (Read Weathering the storms) And it is no different with the UMS, as the university is popularly known by its abbreviation.

 

Since its founding 15 years ago, the university has been an enigma and a cause of unhappiness for Sabahans as it seeks to reconcile opposing national and state aspirations in its administration. Federal dominance in the running of the UMS adds credence to Sabahans’ protests that Kuala Lumpur has not treated Sabah as an equal partner in governing the country. In the early years of Malaysia, Sabah had autonomy over education; but not anymore.

 

The UMS has been Sabahans’ long cherished dream of having cheap and good tertiary education at their doorstep. But they have been badly disappointed. Sabahans put the blame on Kuala Lumpur for shutting them out of their university from day one. Mr Kamaruzaman (picture) says this is not true. In fact, the UMS has the largest Sabahan student population of any Malaysian university: 6,668 undergraduates at the last count or 40.6 % of this year’s total of 16,398. Mr Kamaruzaman says that it has always been his university’s policy to allocate 40% of the places to Sabahans, 50% to peninsular Malaysians and 10% to Sarawakians. “We don’t want the entire student population in this university to be made up of Sabahans,” he told Insight Sabah during an interview on August 24. “The rest must go to universities on the peninsula and Sarawak.”

 

Mr Kamaruzaman, who is the first Sabahan to become a vice-chancellor of a Malaysian university, is a fervent advocate of national integration. He sees universities as ideal melting pots for multi-racial Malaysians of different strokes. Hostels in the campus that sprawls over gently rolling hills of 404 hectares have a good racial mix of 10,000 Malays, ethnic Chinese and Indians, and indigenous people of Borneo such as the Kadazandusuns, Muruts, Ibans and Bidayuhs. The UMS makes sure that not one ethnic group dominate the hostels.

 

Sabahans however do not see the need for such imposed racial integration. Close interaction of people of different races and religions comes naturally to them. As Mr Kamaruzaman points out, it is more for other Malaysians. He notes with a sense of pride that it is only in Sabah where true multi-racialism is practised; where families are made up of people of different races and religions. “Some of my relatives are Christians and some have no religion,” he says. “When there is a wedding or funeral, Muslims are served halal food while others enjoy their beer party.”

 

In east Malaysia, names can be misleading. Many indigenous Sarawakians and Sabahans have Muslim-sounding names but they are in fact Christians; some of them are Christian priests and pastors. Idris Jala, the former chief executive officer of Malaysia Airlines, is a case in point. Idris is a common Muslim name in Malaysia. Its English equivalent is Andrew. But Mr Idris is a Christian. He is a native Kelabit of Sarawak. Mr Kamaruzaman is a Muslim Malay from the east coast timber town of Tawau. “I don’t like people from wherever they come, Mars or the moon, telling us what to do in terms of (racial) integration,” he says.

 

Thus Mr Kamaruzaman sees his UMS as a role model for building a harmonious cosmopolitan nation for the rest of the country’s 19 public universities and more than 400 private tertiary institutions. In fact, the UMS’s approach to national integration is the cornerstone of prime minister Najib Razak’s much flaunted One Malaysia concept of national unity. Mr Kamaruzaman says his university is colour-blind. “There’s no discrimination based on race or religion,” he stresses.

 

Unfortunately, Kuala Lumpur's good intention for the UMS has strangely wounded much of Sabahans’ pride and shattered whatever hope they have of their university. Kuala Lumpur appointed Abu Hassan Othman, a peninsular Malaysian, as the UMS’s first vice-chancellor thinking that his credentials would be advantageous to the new university. But his appointment disappointed Sabahans who were refused admission to their university. The federal government did little to make amends. Instead, Sabahans were despaired when Kuala Lumpur appointed another west Malaysian, Noh Dalimin, to replace Mr Abu in 2005. 

 

It took Sabah’s outspoken lawmaker Anifah Aman’s scathing attack against the federal government  last year that finally forced it to recognise the Sabahans' despondency. (Read Weathering the storms) Mr Kamaruzaman was immediately recalled from retirement to head the UMS. He started as the dean of student affairs in 1995 before retiring last year as the deputy vice chancellor in charge of research and development. He was the deputy vice chancellor for 13 years. 

 

Nonetheless, Mr Kamaruzaman’s belated appointment as their university’s vice-chancellor has done little to change Sabahans’ poor perception of the UMS. Notwithstanding the facts and figures, they feel that they have been short-changed by the federal government in the university’s administration from undergraduate admissions to staffing. 

Not so, says Mr Kamaruzaman.

 

The truth is that the UMS could not fill the 40% quota of Sabahan undergraduates despite the small maiden intake of 207. The intake was restricted by the lack of classrooms and teaching staff when teaching began at rented premises in 1995. It began with three schools: social sciences, business and economics, and science and technology. The problem, he says, was that Sabahans were not interested in science and technology while the other schools were quickly filled. It had 72 staff out of which 33 were academics. And it was difficult to find enough Sabahans to fill the posts.

Enrollment day at the UMS

 

The UMS has since grown tremendously with student population nearing its 20,000 maximum. What is stopping the university from taking more students is the lack of accommodation. Already, 40% of the 17,284 undergraduate and post-graduate students live outside the campus. Teaching staff have shot up from 33 in 1995 to 774 this year. Yet the UMS faces difficulty in finding Sabahans for top teaching posts to fill the 40% quota.

 

Of the 33 professors, only five are Sabahans and 26 out of 96 associate professors are Sabahans. At the lower end, Sabahans exceed the quota: 225 out of 420 lecturers; 58 out of 123 senior lecturers and 54 out of 89 tutors. As a long-term measure to overcome the shortage of local teaching expertise, the UMS has been sending its younger lecturers to Britain and Australia for doctorate courses. Meanwhile, it employs 86 foreign lecturers with PhDs on three-year contracts; most of them are Burmese staffing the medical school which debuted in 2003. The UMS’s first batch of 32 doctors graduated last year.

 

Including a branch campus in Labuan, the UMS now has 13 schools, 11 centres of learning, three institutes and two research units offering 73 degrees.

 

Nevertheless, Sabahans are not enthused by the UMS’s spectacular growth. Many of them do not even bother to apply for places in their university. Instead, thousands of them make a beeline each year for universities in Singapore, Australia, Britain, Canada and America paying hefty fees and high living costs. They are convinced that the federal government way of admitting students to public universities does not favour them. And if they do get in, there is little chance that they will get the course of their choice.

 

Mr Kamaruzaman recognises the problem. But his university has little say in admission until it becomes an apex university. That is a long way into the future. For now, he is trying to make his university, which has not made it to the world’s top 500 varsity ranking, internationally famous. He aims to turn it into a research university by 2016. That would give the UMS more flexibility in funding its operations. The university has undertaken research in more than 70 science and non-science categories and it has won almost 200 local and international awards for its effort.

 

But research funding has been a pittance. The UMS has so far received about 26m ringgit in research grants from the government and private business. Mr Kamaruzaman looks with envy at the billions of ringgit research universities get that enable them to pay top salaries for the best brains. At the UMS, the monthly take-home pay for top teaching staff ranges from 12,000 to 20,000 ringgit. A professor at London’s Imperial College earns 40,000 ringgit a month on average.

 

Like all other public universities, the UMS is funded by the federal government. It receives about 250m ringgit a year for its management. Mr Kamaruzaman says this is not enough as it pays for only 90% of his university’s expenditure.

 

The UMS has to depend on student fees for the rest. Local students pay 1,100 ringgit a year. Foreign students pay about four times that. This is where much of Sabahans’ unhappiness lies. Studying at the UMS costs only a fraction of what Sabahans pay overseas. Depending on the courses, a Sabahan studying in a British university will have to pay between 60,000 and 150,000 ringgit in annual tuition fees. Living costs will double that. Yet, ironically, most Sabahan students cannot benefit from these savings because they are shut out by a federal undergraduate selection process all in the name of national integration.

 

Kuala Lumpur’s empathy for the Sabahans’ plight seems wanting. National interests will prevail over state aspirations as long as the UMS is funded by the federal government. – Insight Sabah

*Singapore was expelled from Malaysia in 1965.