University Ranking

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University rankings: Think again on academic staff

By H.Z.A., Kuala Lumpur
14 November, 2007

THE failure of our public universities to make it into the top 200 of the Times Higher Education Supplement university rankings recently should not surprise the vice-chancellors and policy-makers in the Higher Education Ministry. They knew exactly what was needed even before the rankings began in 2004 but they have ignored it. In the late 1980s, a local daily published a series of articles lamenting mediocrity in academia. However, the vice-chancellors then did nothing to address the issues raised and their successors later took a different, and more medio-cre course of action to highlight their "successes", i.e. by winning medals at invention and trade exhibitions.

After the 2005 rankings created a controversy, I pointed out that many of our university professors do not deserve their coveted posts. The reason these professors do not qualify for the prestigious posts is because of their very low number of publications and citations.

They may have doctorate degrees and may have spent a good part of their life teaching. However, they should not have been promoted to their current posts which, in the more advanced universities, is reserved only for those academics who are recognised among their peers for having obtained a high level of expertise in a particular field.

I also suggested that all universities should post the biodata of their academics on their websites that include their published papers and the citations (if any) that they have obtained.

However, many of these universities have not done so and those that do post the data seemed to have buried the publication and citation information among other personal data, such as administrative posts held and medals won at invention shows.

It seemed that most of these universities are not keen to post their academic staff's biodata on their website since this will expose their weaknesses.

As an example, an analysis of the citations obtained by the academics at Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM) from 1996 to last year revealed that more than half of the professors there do not deserve their posts (http://ekspress.psz.utm.my/jsp/Citation/Citation 96-06.xls).

Of the 44 full professors listed, only 11 had accumulated more than 50 citations each in that period. Three are outstanding with more than 100 citations each and deserved their professorships.

Of the remaining 33 full professors, 27 of them obtained fewer than 10 citations each with a few of them obtaining only one. Some of them who were promoted to the post of professors nearly a decade ago only obtained their citations in the last few years.

This shows that they had not obtained any citations, and hence were hardly recognised locally or abroad, when they were promoted.

The same pattern can be seen for the other academics who held the posts of associate professors and lecturers. However, a few of them are really outstanding and they have even accumulated more citations than the citation-challenged professors mentioned above.

The other local universities listed higher in the Times rankings have similar patterns in their academic citations, although they may be slightly better than UTM.

If the VCs and the ministry are serious in achieving world-class standard for the local universities, then they should consider abolishing the current "seniority of service" system and purge the academia of the "deadwood professors".

In reputable Western universities, it is not uncommon to find a senior lecturer who has published more than 100 papers during his many years of service there.

This is because he had not obtained sufficient recognition in his field of research because of a lack of citation of his papers. He may be good at teaching the basic knowledge to undergraduates but he is simply not good enough to be made a professor.

This academic meritocracy system should be implemented here if the government is really serious about having world-class universities.

Those professors who cannot prove that they are worthy of their prestigious posts should either be demoted to the rank of senior lecturers or make way for those more deserving.

The unwritten promotion system of considering only the number of papers published should be replaced by the number of citations obtained.

This is to ensure that the academics concerned realise that they have to publish quality papers to get their citations and subsequent promotion. Currently, some of the academics are known to publish mediocre papers in large numbers in order to get promoted quickly.