Replicate palm oil council model to promote universities abroad
14.08.2023 (New Straits Times) - ECONOMIC development would be hampered without talent. All countries, developed or developing, give priority to talent development.
A major share of the annual budget is allocated for the nurturing of talent. There's no way a country can progress without talent in government, industry, academia and more.
A country may be blessed with natural resources, but without expertise, converting them into economic wealth is almost impossible.
Importing talent may be an option but it is not sustainable.
Other countries also need to keep their talent. Education is the instrument to raise and train talent. University education is considered the last leg of the value chain in education that produces talent for the country.
Universities play a crucial role in nurturing talent. It is important to design an effective course curriculum and an efficient delivery mechanism.
We are fortunate to have an oversight quality assurance mechanism to ensure compliance with the highest international higher education standard.
Many agree that the Malaysian Qualifications Agency has done a good job to ensure the standard of higher education matches the best in the world.
Nowadays, we know of even private universities enjoying international recognition.
A few, such as UCSI University and Taylor's University, are in the world's top 300, according to the QS World University Rankings 2024.
Other private universities in the country are busy instituting measures to improve themselves.
Many are increasing investments in research to raise their publication profile.
Publishing and aiming for the highest citation have developed into a competitive race.
Some faculty poaching has also emerged from such pressures.
Many view this development as healthy as the country ramps up efforts to raise its global innovation score, a significant measure in the world competitiveness index.
There is no doubt that a high spot in the world competitiveness ranking means a lot as we try to attract more foreign direct investment (FDI).
There is concern that we have been losing to neighbouring countries in attracting FDI.
Vietnam has been attracting more FDI to its shores.
The claim is that apart from the availability of good and hard- working talent, its ease of doing business has improved tremendously. Vietnam has been aggressive in research and development and talent development in recent years.
Not all educationists in the country view ranking as necessary though.
Many criticise our obsession with ranking. They say ranking is an unnecessary expenditure and of no use to the bigger agenda of training the best talent for the country.
Efforts devoted to the ranking exercise also take away time from the more important teaching function of universities.
Critics argue that the quality of R&D is also compromised because ranking emphasises the numbers game.
This puts universities in a dilemma. Making the country an international hub for higher education has always been a goal as articulated in the Malaysia Education Blueprint 2015-2025.
To achieve this, we need to position the country favourably in the world market for higher education.
Participating in the world higher education ranking, managed by international outfits such as QS and Times, is seen as one option in marketing.
Through the ranking exercise, the universities are more visible to students outside the country.
It is unfortunate that we do not have our own marketing platform for universities.
It has been suggested that we look to how the palm oil industry promotes palm oil.
The Malaysian Palm Oil Council has been marketing palm oil for close to three decades.
Through the good work of the council, many market obstacles have been cleared.
No wonder palm oil is now the leading traded vegetable oil in the world, taking more than a third of global trade.
The Higher Education Ministry may want to replicate the palm oil marketing model to better position our universities in the global education market.
The writer is a professor at the Tan Sri Omar Centre for STI Policy, UCSI University