Postgrad smokescreen?

One of the first initiatives announced by new UM VC, Prof Ghauth Jasmon, is the decision to increase the number of post graduate students at the UM and reducing the number of undergrads. This is not really something new. We've blogged about it here and here. Many of my previously expressed concerns are still valid today. What I fear more is that this may be a smokescreen that the new VC will be forced to use to increase the number of foreigners at the postgrad level in an attempt to artificially boost UM's position in the THES rankings.

This is a sample of what I previously blogged about:

The first question that comes to mind is this - where are all these 'extra' postgraduate students going to come from? According to the same Table, to achieve this three fold increase in postgraduate student enrolment, we need to have an annual average growth rate of 26% for the next 5 years. That seems like a pretty tall task. Imagine a faculty with 40 Phd students and 40 Masters students. To achieve a three fold increase in enrolment, this faculty has to take in an average of 16 new students in both the Masters and PhD programs for the next five years (closer to 20 if you take into account graduating students).

I am quite sure that if one requires a department to increase its intake of students at such a rate, quality will surely be compromised. Most programs probably won't get sufficient applications to makeup the additional places required for growth. And if they do, it probably means that they are letting in students who might not have otherwised qualified.

One can only begin to imagine possible consequences. Since most departments would not be willing to fail or to hold back the underperfomers, what might happen is that we'd get a flood of underqualified Masters or PhD holders coming out from our public universities.

While an increase in the number of post grads is probably necessary if one wants to become a research university, it is not a sufficient condition. I asked in my earlier post the following questions:

- Can our public universities sustain such a dramatic and large increase in the intake of post grads?
- Do we have enough PhDs among our academia who are sufficiently trained to teach these new post grad students? (Currently only 30% of our academic staff have PhDs, the MOHE plans to increase this to 60%)
- Will we compromise on the standards newly hired academics to cope with this increase in the number of post grads?

These questions are still relevant. I doubt that we have the infrastructure (physical hardware and software) to support this level of increase in the number of post grads. But I can be convinced if I see substantive changes in the way resources are allocated within the universities, the way in which academics are hired and promoted and the way in which post grads are trained and supported.

What was interesting about the most recent newspaper report was the the UM VC stated that the number of undergrads accepted would be decreased. While I always thought that the number of post grads would increase over time in our public universities, I've assumed that the number of undergrads would also increase given the high and increasing demand for affordable higher education (albeit at a slower rate compared to the post grads). This surprises me somewhat.

I agree somewhat with the premise expressed by Gerakan Kedah Youth Chief, Tan Keng Liang.

"I hope that UM can consider opening up more undergraduate places to qualified non-bumiputera Malaysian students. It is better for UM to boost its rankings and improve its quality by accepting more highly-qualified Malaysian youths," he said.

This premise is true only if UM opens up more places to qualified non-bumiputera students. But I'm not sure if this is necessarily the case at least in the short run. My sense is that almost ALL the well qualified non-bumi students who takes the STPM exam manage to get placed in a public university. They may not all get their 1st choice uni or 1st choice course but I'm almost positive that the top 50% of non-bumi STPM students gets admitted into a public uni. The other highly qualified non-bumi students are either studying overseas or studying in private colleges. Most of them have no desire to apply to a public uni, partly because they know it's difficult to get into the course of their choice i.e. medicine and partly because they know that the standards are lower in most public universities. Even if the MOHE agrees to allow more non-bumis entry into the public unis, they won't be able to attract a slew of high quality non-bumi students. What they might get is those non-bumi students who took the STPM but did not qualify to gain entry into ANY public university.

What Keng Liang also needs to consider is that UM's 'quality' may be boosted by taking in more post grads and if this process is transparent and meritocratic, I'm willing to bet that there should be more non-bumis accepted at the post grad level compared to the undergrad level. If this is indeed the case, then Keng Liang should have less to worry about in terms of the quality issue compared to allowing more non-bumis entry at the undergrad level.

Prof Ghauth is right to say that having most post-grad students is more likely to increase the academic output of a university but he's got the causation arrow wrong. Having more post-grad students is a result of increasing the number of qualified academics at the professorial level who will hopefully increase the level of academic output. Increasing the number of grad students but not having the proper support academic structure to support them e.g. not enough qualified supervisors will not increase academic output because there are not enough qualified professors in place which means that the post grad students themselves will not be adequately supported.

Finally, my biggest fear is that this is a smokescreen that UM will try to use to increase the foreign intake of students at the post-grad level. I've said this before and I'll say it again - I don't have a problem with accepting post-grads who are foreigners at UM as long as it is done transparently - good quality post grads, the locals are not disadvantaged, etc... But I'm not sure that this will be the case. Rather, it may just be an easy shortcut for UM to increase the number of foreign students to increase UM's position in the THES ratings. This of course after it fell from 93 because THES realized that Indian and Chinese students in Malaysia were not foreigners after all.