But “The Rot” Stopped Reforms
By Dr. Collin Abraham
Terence Fernandez is to be commended for bringing ‘the rot’ down to earth. His analysis provides the rare opportunity to highlight the case where, to the best of my knowledge, the ‘rot’ literally forced the Vice Chancellor of the leading University Malaya to resign!
This scenario highlights the fact that, although the highly acclaimed recent national acknowledgement of the splendid, defining, academic and professional work of the late Professor Syed Hussein Alatas is warmly welcomed, his strenuous efforts to project these same achievements to ‘stop the rot’ in UM through reforms, totally failed.
Instead, the rot stopped him!
This is not the place to focus on the ‘blow-by blow’ opposition to the fundamental structural reforms he tried to introduce in areas such as curricula and the appointment of Professors based on merit. Indeed, Alatas himself explained that the reason was because the opposition was largely from “Professors Kangkong” – empty at the stem! Alas and unfortunately, Hussein lamented that although a ‘brain drain’ out of the varsity for these Professors might be a solution, regrettably the basic problem was “where are the drains (meaning universities) that will accept such brains”!
But to Alatas, the “rot’ was basically reinforced by his theory of “the high cost of flattery”. Because the thirteen state nation was ‘obsessed’ with granting annual ‘merit’ awards to literally millions of Malaysians, Alatas argued that this had created a stratified hierarchy of so-called ‘achievers’ in universities, who were lulled into a state of complacency by relying on these honourary titles for determining competence and capability and based on the criteria of “I scratch your back, you scratch mine”. Indeed this practice has even extended to situations “bordering on the criminal” where at least in one private university-college a Tan Sri blantantly uses the title “Dr” without possessing the Ph.D.
Unfortunately, Professor Alatas was unable to complete and publish his thesis due to his untimely demise. But perhaps I might respectfully be allowed to add that if “the high cost of flattery” is extended to the wider political culture, it can be said to have permeated the entire civil and corporate social structure and to have entrenched the status quo making it virtually impossible to institute radical reforms to address and hopefully eliminate the “Rot”.
Professor Alatas would have been delighted with the defining observation of Terence himself. “As long as the herd mentality and partisan policies continue to infiltrate our education system, we can bet that it will be a matter of time before Malaysian Universities disappear from (International) rankings.
