Spotlight on USM (Part I)

About a week ago, I said I would look at the qualifications of the USM faculty. First of all, I'd like to apologize for taking so long to write this post. (You'll see why in a minute) Secondly, I'd like to thank Ben Teh, a regular reader who's currently doing his PhD in Japan, for this link to a detailed listing of USM's faculty. Thirdly, I'd like to apologize for what is going to be a long post.

Instead of doing a cursory run through of the USM faculty listed in the link above, I thought I'd do something a little more systematic, for my own benefit as well as for the benefit of our readers (hopefully). So what I did was the following:

- I compiled the name, highest qualification of each USM faculty, the name of the university of that highest qualification, the country of that university
- Of those faculty with PhDs, I tried to calculate the % of these PhDs which were from top universities either in the UK or the US

(This took quite a bit of time since I had to convert the data from pdf to excel form and then had to format the data)

The reasons for doing this were manifold. For example, I wanted to get a sense of the % of faculty at USM who had PhDs, an issue which the MOHE has been and is currently concerned about. In addition, I also wanted to get a sense of where most of our faculty were obtaining their PhDs from. More importantly, I wanted to see if most of these PhDs were obtained from relatively well known / good schools especially given the recent announcement by Tok Pa that postgraduate scholarships will only be offered to those who have been accepted by top schools (which Tony blogged about here). If, for example, many of the current USM faculty did not obtain their PhDs from top schools, how likely is it that future faculty will obtain their PhDs from top schools?

OK, some summary statistics first. I counted approxtimately 900 faculty in the ACU yearbook link found above. I excluded faculty from the dental and medical schools since almost all of the faculty here would be "Doctors". Included also are professors, associate professors, senior lecturers and lecturers whose names are not listed but was mentioned in the yearbook. (For these 'nameless' ones, I don't have information about their highest degree obtained and the related information) There are approximately 190 of these 'nameless' ones.

Of the remaining 710 whose full information are included in the yearbook, a surprisingly high % have PhDs. 547 or approximately 77% have PhDs. This is certainly above the 60% overall target set by MOHE for all public universities. Even if we assume that some % of those listed as senior lecturers and lecturers are not PhD holders (I estimated the figure at 50%), I still find that approximately 67% of the USM faculty obtain PhDs (about 600 out of 900). If this is indeed the case, then USM is well ahead of MOHE's 60% requirement. (If we assume that all senior lecturers and lecturers are NOT PhD holders, then only 60% of USM's faculty are PhD holders, right at the 60% MOHE requirement).

It would not surprise me if the other top two public universities in Malaysia, namely UKM and UM, have a similar % of faculty with PhDs. Which leads me to my next question: If UM, USM and UKM have more than 60% of their faculty with PhDs and if MOHE's overall target is 60% for all public universities, what then is the % of faculty with PhDs in the other public universities in Malaysia? (e.g. UITM, UUM, UPM, UNIMAS etc...) I would think that it would be significantly lower than 60% to drag the overall % for all public universities to about 30%, which is the latest national estimate. Perhaps some of our readers at universities like UITM and UUM can give us as sense of how many of their lecturers are actually PhD holders?

Next, where did these faculty obtain their PhDs from? A large number of them (slightly more than 53%) obtained their PhDs from UK universities. Unsurprising, given our long history of sending students to the UK. Coming in 2nd, at approximately 20%, are US universities. PhDs from Malaysian universities comprise approximately 15% of total PhDs. PhDs from Australian and Indian universities account for around 4.5% and 3.9% of total PhDs, respectively. These five countries (UK, US, Malaysia, Australia and India) account for 95% of all PhDs in USM. The remaining countries include Singapore, Thailand, Canada, Japan and France, just to name a few.

I decided to look at PhDs from UK and US universities since the universities in these two countries account for 73% of total PhDs at USM. I wanted to calculate the % of PhDs from top universities as measured by the latest rankings available. I realize that this is somewhat of a flawed methodolgy for a variety of reasons (rankings may have changed over time, different universities may be good in different fields) but I decided to stick with this method because it's relatively simple and intuitive. Furthermore, even if one argues that rankings are relative and subjective and that different schools specialise in different areas, I think it's hard to argue against the fact that top schools such as Cambridge, Oxford, Harvard or Princeton MUST be good in certain fields and if there are very few PhD holders from such schools in a university, this must account for something.

And so I proceed. Using the latest THES university rankings for UK universities (2007), I allocated a ranking for each of the schools from which at least one faculty member obtained a PhD from. There were a total of 47 UK schools. I then proceeded to calculate the % of PhDs which were obtained from Top 10, Top 20 and Top 30 schools in the UK. The corresponding figures are 4.3%, 21.8% and 49.7%. In other words, only 4.3% of total PhDs obtained from UK universities were obtained from schools that were ranked in the Top 10. More than 50% were obtained from schools that were outside the Top 30.

From the ACU data, I found only 1 PhD holder from Cambridge and none from Oxford. Unfortunately, because PhD holders from the University of London unis are listed as PhD (London), I wasn't able to ascertain the no of PhDs from Imperial College, the London School of Economics, SOAS, UCL and King's College, all of which are good universities, in my humble opinion. Given that the UOL includes a diverse group of member institutions, I gave the overall UOL PhD a ranking of 15, which is the average ranking for all UOLs member institutions in the THES rankings (Goldsmith's at 45 drags the overall UOL ranking down).

33 faculty from USM obtained their PhDs from the UOL. 29 were from the University of Wales member institutions, which includes Aberystwyth, Bangor, Lampeter, Swansea, University of Wales Institute, Cardiff, University of Wales, Newport and Cardiff University (average ranking of 51). The other popular universities are Leeds (34)(ranking in parentheses), Sheffield (24), Newcastle (25), Hull (49), Birmingham (33), Manchester (26), Reading (31), Strathcylde (40), Liverpool (39).

I think many of these universities are good universities, though maybe not great universities, and I'm sure that many of them have fine PhD programs in areas where many of the USM faculty obtain their PhDs in. But the fact that only a relatively small number of USM's faculty obtained their PhDs from top 10 UK universities should give pause to the MOHE in regards to their policy of awarding postgrad scholarships only to those who enter into top universities. MOHE certainly has to be careful in how it defines top universties.

Furthermore, this simple exercise that I've carried out, coupled with my personal experience in the UK, leads me to believe that there is some sort of network and networking effect at work here. A university which has accepted many Malaysians in the past is more likely to accept more Malaysians in the future. Furthermore, universities which currently have some number of Malaysians doing their PhD there are likely to attract more applicants from Malaysia to their programs because of familiarity, that it's easier to get settled into a place with at least some fellow Malaysians and so on. Also, current faculty who are from these universities are also likely to know current faculty in those UK universities and can more easily refer potential students to work under this or that professor in that particular UK university.

All this also points to the difficulty of sending potential PhD students to places like Cambridge and Oxford. Firstly, with so few Malaysian professors in our local varsities who are from these universities, it is much harder for them to be credible referees for potential Malaysian PhD students, many of them graduates from local universities. Secondly, it is quite likely that Malaysians with PhDs from Cambridge and Oxford are loth to return to teach in public universities for a variety of reasons (salary, better opportunities elsewhere, poor research environment etc...).

Perhaps, the possibility of an RM500 million 'donation' to Cambridge is supposed to make it easier for potential Malaysian PhD students to get a place in Cambridge?

What is the picture like for US PhDs? Here we find a smaller 'network' or 'networking' effect at work. Because there are more US universities, the USM faculty who have US PhDs come from many different universities. I used the latest US News and World Report rankings to calculate the % of PhDs from top 10, top 50 and top 100 universities. The corresponding figures are 3.2%, 25.3% and 53.2%. Only 5 out of the 168 US PhDs were from Top 10 schools (Stanford, MIT, Harvard, Columbia and Yale). Slightly less than half of the US PhDs were from schools outside the top 100. Some of these universities - Bradley, Northern Illinois, Mississipi State, Hawaii.

Again, I repeat some of what I've said in previous posts. It's extremely difficult to get a place in a PhD. program in a top US university. It's even more difficult when (a) the applicant does not have a US undergrad degree (b) the applicant does not have referees who know professors in these top schools personally. And if you DO get a place, it's likely that the university will fund your entire program. Given that the current PhD scholarship in Malaysia only funds a candidate for 3 to 3 1/2 years, it makes it even less likely that an applicant who does get accepted into a top 10 or top 20 school will want to take the Malaysian scholarship if he or she can accept a scholarship from the US university in question.

My conclusion from this rather long post? That the MOHE needs to work closely with the local universities to try to place potential PhD students in good programs but at the same time, be realistic that gaining entry into a top 10 program in a US or UK university is not that easy. My sense is that it's probably easier gaining entry into a top 10 UK university given that UK universities are more strapped for funds and hence, more likely to accept a fee paying Malaysian PhD student. So even though I'm a strong supporter of PhD programs here in the US, for practical purposes, it probably makes more sense for MOHE and the public universities to concentrate of UK universities instead.

Finally, the strength of any research university is not to be judged by where the faculty obtained their PhDs from but the quality of research which the faculty produces. This is much more difficult to evaluate in the kind of semi-comprehensive manner which I've done here. But try I will. In a later post, which will have to wait until I finish my exams and some final papers.