Talk for FST Professors Council Meeting , UKM early 2016

20 steps towards more intellectual

Malaysia: Agenda for goverment
Shahidan Radiman
School of Applied Physics , Faculty of Science and Technology
UKM Bangi 43600 , Selangor DE.
E-mail: shahidan@ukm.edu.my

www.ukm.my/fst
 Why the need for these agenda?
It is becoming clear that the intellectual atmosphere in
Malaysian universities is going down. This is reflected in
generally lower rankings year by year reflecting lower
fundings as well as depleting experienced professors
who wanted to stay in the academia.
Something has to be done to make academia an
interesting and mind-challenging endeavour
contributing to the society in particular and
humankind. This pursuit is coded in the Quran in the
prayer of Prophet Muhammad s.a.w “ O Lord , increase
me in knowledge “.
Step 1

Open all professorship posts in any public universities to all

Malaysian academics

This will ensure not only competition among universities in providing the
best academic atmosphere but also increased mobility in academia . It
will ensure equal opportunity to candidate , implementation of the same
standards of criteria for all public universities. The academic is allowed to
transfer all his/her services into the new university since after all it is
under the same Min.of Education.

As a result of this universities will put up higher academic integrity and a

person is versatile in performing his duty not to a particular university but
for the nation. So, professor’s post is for the eligible rather than “ whom
you know”.
Step 2

Democratise the election of Vice Chancellors and Deputy Vice

Chancellors at public universities.

If they are shortlisted they must present their visions and manifesto to
the academics of that particular university.

What this means is that their election should be based 70% by vote
from academic staffs and 30 % from professionals e.g panels of
experts either local or overseas or scientific bodies like Malaysian
Academy of Sc.
Step 3

Towards a gearing ratio of > 10 .

The University management and Min.of Education or MOSTI need to

advice researchers who has low gearing ratio so that they buck-up and
not waste public funds in research , for e.g if a person published 100
scopus-indexed paper he /she should have an h-index of at least 100/10
= 10 . Other wise he/she should be “reminded” that their paper are NOT
cited.

Of course one need to consider also patents , strategic research etc so

as NOT to penalize this researcher. For e.g you cannot penalize a person
doing research on Malaysian insect or study on Lake Chini since he/she
is doing a strategic research which might not be cited by overseas
researchers.

This action/rule help a researcher to JUSTIFY his/her research topics to

the public since academia basically used public/govt. fundings
Step 4

Pressure group from professors council for “positive” fundings by

government need to be formed.

In general there are strategic research ( a “must-do” research) for any

country that wanted to stay ahead of economic or military downturn , even
geopolitical ones.

However, for some reason pressure groups are thought to be “rebellious”

against government whereas in developed countries it is normal for certain
sectors of the professors/academia to lobby the government for fundings in
say “ high energy physics “ , “ gamma ray astronomy “ or “ neutrino research
“ where large fundings are required with no immediate benefits.

This means more engagement with govt. ministers and discussions with
govt. officials at several levels.
Currently our Majlis Professor Negara doesnt do that….
Step 5

Control of private colleges (in every way)

I am not saying to control them because they are competing with public
universities , but because of their lackey policies especially with the
coming of African (mainly Nigerian ) students who use private college as
their port of criminal activities and other mess.

Private colleges should COMPLIMENT public universities and for this

effort their quality need to be tip top. Just check how many Phd holders
or professionally qualified people do they have?
Step 6

More intellectual magazines and newspapers

One quick survey would reveal the downturn in newspaper and

magazine subscriptions among the public and this include free online
news. Why ? People are fed up with cheap and unintellectualized
news production and too much politicking and propaganda writings.

Let us use newspapers to expand the public minds, discussion and

debate allowed with middle pages written by an expert in his field.
There should be more pages for people to write rather than pages
and pages of advertisements!

Some degree of social engineering is needed too via newspaper

disseminations. The public are wise enough but they need to be
made more wiser !
Step 7

Encourage Physics and Maths in school curriculums. More

Olympiads is necessary . Theory groups in physics, chemistry
and biology should be set up by mandate at universities .

Any visiting professors to Malaysian universities will know the lack of

theoreticians among physics, chemistry or biology departments. Even
theoreticians among engineers and economic dept are important.
But this problem is always swept under the carpet. After more than 4
decades and now going for 5 decades, the cream of cream cannot be
found in the universities !

This situation is totally pathetic and no study has been made to

reverse the situation. If you don’t have theoreticians and model
builders how can any institution ever able to create new technology?
Step 8

Set up Philosophy Dept in several universities

Most people think that philosophy is a useless subject. They even think
that philosophy means to thread on the boundary of real science. It is for
the “non learned” to think so, for every well-known (Ivy league)
universities have a Dept of Philosophy and their philosophy professors
have great impact towards frontier research , fundamental questions and
directions to be pursued by the academia.

Philosophy deals with every possible intellectual pursuits you can think
of including matters of metaphysics and theology.
Step 9

Set up International Centre for Theoretical Physics or its like of ICTP

(Trieste, Italy) in Malaysia.

This will encourage young people to pursue career in this field with the help
of great scientists all over the world in a series of Summer/Winter schools
and workshops over several years.

It can also provide bridging programmes for students who has not a strong
background in theory to be “beefed up” so that they are able to pursue MSc
or Phd in theoretical areas.

It can also be funded by ASEAN so that this can be a joint ASEAN effort
who share similar problems but would like to remediate it.
Step 10

Open up academic positions in local universities with 15-20 % from

overseas ( international academics) including up to 50 % for postdocs

This will create an international climate of knowledge and intellectual

pursuits especially to fill in the gap where locals are lacking e.g theoretical
areas but which should be planned such that locals are filling up the voids
over time. This doesn’t mean the expat academics should go but that local
academics should also be given a chance to stay overseas for up to 1 year
or even more during sabbatical leave e.g 1 year + 9 months.

Attachments and visiting professors from overseas with set objectives

should also be encouraged.
Step 11

Set up special truly Fundamental Grants for scientists to pursue

fundamental area of research in quantum physics, topology ,
differential geometry , group theory and the abstract mathematics e.g
topoi.

Currently FRGS grants provided by MOHE covers almost anything that can
be labelled “fundamental” including engineering and environmental
subjects.

This grant should allow for total scholarships for students to pursue MSc
and Phd studies. There shouldn’t be any restrictionson intake since
naturally only the top 5 % of the country will “dare” pursue these areas of
research.
Step 12

Majlis Professor Negara should “move” and lead many strategic

groups. Currently there are about 8 or 9 clusters out of 1800
professors , that means 200 professors per clusters- this is too big.

If we assume 10 professors for any lead group then there will be

180 subgroups , which should be the maximum amount of
specialized areas existing in the modern corpus of knowledge!

Each of these specialized subclusters can recommend whatever is

fitting to the govt. for moving forward in R &D . If MOHE gave them
RM 5 k per year for meetings and 2 reports it only cost them 180x5 =
RM 900 k per year for a full-fledge report recommendations.
Step 13

Malaysia is becoming the hub for Islamic finance. So, there

should be more involvement and larger mass of theoretical and
computational research in this area.

There should be cess funds from Islamic Banking activity like PORIM
being funded from palm-oil industries , that can be use to support R &
D in Islamic banking.
Step 14

Integrate university’s Graduate Business School with science and

engineering subjects.

Business schools need to be more “open minded” because these days

you cannot do business without understanding the basic science and the
engineering aspects of production , materials used as well as
nanotechnology applied in opto-electronic gadgets.

There should be a balanced curriculum as well as research activities in

the graduate schools in the related areas.
Step 15

Strategic facilities for key /security informations.

Recently Malaysia has found many interesting archeological sites

including dinasaurs trace remains. Many caves, rivers , hills and
wetlands remains to be excavated . However alal carbon dating are
done overseas.

An accelerator -based carbon dating facility should be built within any

of the hosting universities in the country . It will also help the
government in CSI works etc and this should be the priority in 11th
Malaysia plan.

To go further this could also means handling big data for the country’s
bio-information from plant genomes to species taxonomy. This will help
researchers to be able to do search and mapping of species using
computerized technology including imaging.
Step 16

Step up the aerospace and autonomous robot industry.

Not only we need to send more satellites for communication and

land images but we also need to develop our own technology for
rocket and satellite launching but also robots for work/research in
outer space and in specific areas of disaster managements.

This could also means more research in brain studies and artificial
intelligence or man-machine interactions.
Step 17

Encourage more research in interfaith dialogues , studies in

minority languages and culture and inter-relationship
between science an religion.

This will help foster Malaysian society to be broad-minded ,

diverse in unity and enrich existing cultures.

This would also mean more R & D fundings for the soft sciences
but with focused areas for achievements.
Step 18

Set up special funds to be bid by universities/institutions to study

Malaysian politics and how it can be improved.

Currently the Malaysian publics has not benefited from the long battle
(of words and actions) between those in goverment and those in
opposition.

The research will gives its findings and make public any
reommendations.
Step 19

Clear plan and roadmap for public to see and discuss on

Malaysia’s intention to build Nuclear Power Plant as one of its
energy mix post 2020.

This is important as much informations need to be divulge to the

public as a learning and “accepting” process like what societies in
Japan, Korea and France had undergone.

Current level of technology , types of NPP as well as other related

options like SMR (small modular reactors) need to be disseminated
.
Step 20

Clear fundings for science-based engagements of writers and

journalists.

For a developing nation, science popular writing by writers and journalists are
important to promote interests among young generations and the public.
Not only they need to be technology-savvy , but they should also be
technically competent to know the workings and safety of gadgets , repairs
and level of complexity.

Not only the public need to be scientifically minded but they also need to
appreciate the science culture that pervade the society.
Conclusions

These are some of brief thoughts on how to improve the intellectual

environments in universities/institutions of higher learnings and the
public in Malaysia over one Saturday afternoon, 26th Dec. 2015.

I hope it would be useful for the public and government people who are
diligently doing their own jobs !

The holiday mood had certainly inspired me to think properly !

Thank you very much
for your interest !
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